


No Future Is Perfect, But This One's Pretty Good

by Shadowscast



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Because time travel, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Queer Pairing, David "Dave" Katz Lives, Drug Use, Everybody Gets a Hug, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogating The Universe, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Sibling Bonding, Suicidal Thoughts, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Season 2 Spoilers, Why Aren't There Cell Phones In 2019?, a little sex, everybody needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 56,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26203318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowscast/pseuds/Shadowscast
Summary: Dave survives the Vietnam War and goes back to Dallas.  He settles into what promises to be a long, lonely life, working at Glen Oaks Hardware by day and tinkering with circuit boards in the back room by night.Then a time-traveling woman in red boots crashes into his life, and everything changes.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 338
Kudos: 574
Collections: Finished faves, Numerous OTPS Infinite Fandoms





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in The Umbrella Academy's universe. I hope you like it!
> 
> Many thanks to [Yourlibrarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian) for beta-reading.

Dave's favorite time of day at Glen Oaks Hardware was after it closed. The front was locked and quiet; his uncle had gone home. Dave sat at his table in the back room, playing with circuits and transistors. The acrid whiff of melting solder, and the discipline of working with tiny, fragile parts, kept him in the here-and-now. He could safely lose himself in curiosity and logic.

It kept the ghosts at bay.

Metaphorical ghosts, to be clear.

He'd known a man once who saw actual ghosts. Not metaphors, not memories, but literal manifestations of dead people he'd never even met.

No. Dave didn't want to visit those memories right now. Maybe later, at home.

He took a breath, steadied his hands, and focused on his circuit board. A dot of solder had spattered out of place. That would need careful fixing.

There was a sound from out front. A weird muffled swoosh-pop.

Dave's head snapped up and his heart started racing before his thoughts had time to catch up. He'd heard that sound once before in his life, in Vietnam, but—

Gunfire. A sound he'd heard a _lot_ of times in Vietnam.

He didn't stop to think about hitting the ground—he just did it, and he was flat on the floor behind his work desk. The gunfire out front continued in a rapid pulse. Somebody was attacking the hardware shop with a fully automatic weapon. The noise of the destruction was earshattering—not just the gunfire itself, but the sounds of shelves and merchandise blowing apart. The whole front would be filled with flak.

Dave's uncle kept a pistol under the cash. There was no way Dave was making it out there. No way he was taking on a machine gun with a pistol.

He'd have to try for the back exit. Only he'd have to leave the back room and go through a little hallway, and he might be briefly visible to the gunner out front, depending on where they were standing.

If he stayed low, maybe they wouldn't see him. He started a fast elbow-crawl. For a moment he couldn't think of why it felt so strange, until he realized that he'd never done this on tile before; his elbows were expecting mud.

The gunfire stopped. The silence rang in Dave's ears. He elbow-crawled even faster, trying not to let out any audible panting breaths.

A sharp pain on his left side let him know that he'd failed to escape. The force of the kick rolled him right over onto his back, and he was staring up into the barrel of a gun.

He opened his hands without moving them, signaling surrender, and braced himself to die in confusion.

Up behind the gun barrel was a man in a tidy black suit. Asian—Vietnamese?

"David J. Katz?" the man asked in an Australian accent. He sounded calm. A little bored, even.

"Why?" Dave croaked out. Why are you here, why did you destroy the store, why do you know my name? There were a lot of questions he might want to ask if he lived past the next ten seconds.

The muffled swoosh-pop sound happened again. Louder, closer. Immediately behind the gunman, a woman popped out of thin air holding a fat black briefcase. She looked South Asian, with chestnut-dark skin and straight jet-black hair cropped to chin length. She was wearing tight-fitting black clothes and bright red boots. The boots in particular caught Dave's attention, because the first thing the woman did upon materializing was to swing one of her feet up in a high crescent kick and clock the gunman in the temple.

The gunman let out a startled grunt and fell down like a sack of potatoes.

"David J. Katz?" the woman asked in a British accent.

"What the _hell_?" Dave managed to croak out. And then, because whatever else was happening, this woman had apparently just saved his life: "Yes, that's me."

The woman reached out her free hand to offer him a lift off the floor. "Come with me if you want to live," she said with a quirked grin.

Dave accepted the hand up, casting a leery glance down at the unconscious gunman. "Come _where_?"

"The bigger question is _when_ ," the woman said. "I don't agree with this fellow's means, but I'm sympathetic to his ends. You're spawning anomalies in the here-and-now, and we can't just let that happen. I need to put you somewhere safely out of the way. How do you feel about Easter Island, circa 1400-ish?"

Dave stared at her. "You're a time traveler."

She made a finger-pistol gesture accompanied by a voiced 'chh-ching!' "You're a sharp one," she said. "Are you going to need a few minutes to have a gibbering breakdown? If so, I should probably give this bloke a little extra shot of something to keep him down."

Dave had only ever met one other time traveler. "Did you know Klaus Hargreeves?" he asked, not so much because he expected a 'yes,' but more as an attempt at finding a detail of this situation that he could hook his sanity to.

The woman looked mildly surprised. " _You've_ had a run-in with the Hargreeves sibs?" she said. "Well, I guess that explains the anomalies. In that case, I know _just_ where to bring you."

* * *

The swoosh-pop sounded a lot more resonant from the inside. It was accompanied by a profoundly nauseating sense of paradoxical displacement—moving in all directions while standing still.

And then in a blink and a blue flash, the hardware store had been replaced by ... a dingy boiler room? A smell of stale sweat.

Two startled-looking men stared at them.

One of them, sitting on a cot, was the bulkiest fighting-fit man Dave had ever seen in his life. Close-cropped blond hair, square jaw, and biceps the size of a normal man's torso.

The other, leaning against a concrete pillar, looked like a Hispanic Jesus dressed in black leather and an incomprehensible number of straps.

"Lila?" said the Jesus, wide-eyed.

"Diego," returned the mystery woman, with an air of detached amusement. "I found something of yours." She shoved Dave towards Jesus/Diego. Dave stumbled forward, but kept his footing (and also managed to hold onto his stomach contents—barely).

Diego looked at Dave blankly, and then focused on the woman he'd called Lila. "I have no idea who that is," he said. "Lila, are you okay? Can you stay?"

"Technically, I guess he's your brother's," she said. "Hey, what day is it?"

"April 5th," Diego said.

"Twenty-nineteen," the huge man on the cot added, although Lila hadn't asked the time. "Uh, I don't think I know this guy either."

It had been June 6th a moment ago.

"Brilliant," Lila said. "I'm getting really good at aiming this thing."

"Lila, please," Diego said, taking a half-step forward and holding out an imploring hand. "We need to talk."

"Hm," she said. "When did we last see each other? From your point of view."

"Dallas, 1963," Diego said. "Three days ago."

_1963?_ The year Kennedy was shot. The year Dave joined the army.

A year in which—most importantly— _Klaus was still alive_.

"Aw, pookie," Lila crooned in Diego's direction. "It's all so fresh for you. No wonder you look like a kicked puppy." Oddly, even though the words were mocking, there seemed to be an affectionate warmth underlying them.

"How long's it been for you?" Diego asked.

"A few months," Lila said. "Subjectively."

"Are you safe?" Diego asked. "Are you being hunted?"

"Are _we_ safe?" the big man asked, looking worried. "Why are you here, Lila?"

"Just dropping off this package," Lila said, swatting at Dave's shoulder. "The Commission wanted him dead in 1975. They won't care about him here, don't worry."

The big man frowned at Dave. "Who is he?"

"Hell if I know," Lila said. "You figure it out." She hefted her bulky briefcase.

"Wait!" Diego yelped. "Lila, don't go, I—"

"I've got some stuff I need to do," she interrupted him. "Maybe later." And then, with a swoosh-pop and a burst of blue light, she was gone.

Diego moaned, and pawed at the air where the red-booted woman had vanished.

"Tough luck, bro," said the big man, with what looked like honest sympathy. And then he turned to Dave. "Seriously, though, who are you?"

Dave swallowed, and judged that he could probably manage to talk without hurling by now. His knees were shaking like crazy from the waning adrenaline spike, but he managed to stand tall. "David J. Katz," he said, using his full name the same way the machine gun assassin and the mysterious red-booted Lila had—hoping it wouldn't trigger a renewed outbreak of violence.

The big man reacted with nothing but a blank expression, but Diego blinked. "Like on Klaus's dog tags?" he asked.

"Oh, _that_ brother," the big man said.

"You knew Klaus?" Dave asked, with a surge of nervous excitement. And then quickly corrected himself: " _Know._ You _know_ Klaus. He's alive, isn't he?!"

The two strange men exchanged an uneasy-looking glance. "Well, he was three days ago," Diego said.

"No, he _is_ ," Dave assured them happily, and the thought was a solid anchor that let him stand strong against the incomprehensible events of the past few minutes. "You said it's April 5th. I saw him in _November_ of 1963. Will see him. He was fine. Will be fine. God, sorry, this is confusing. Where are we? Are we very far from Dallas?"

"Uh, kinda," Diego said. "We left 1963 a few days ago. It's twenty-nineteen."

Once again, Dave reflexively translated the 20:19 from military time to regular—nineteen minutes past eight in the evening.

Which, come to think of it, wasn't really consistent with the midday-quality light streaming down through the room's small high windows.

And also didn't exactly make sense in the context of the sentence that Diego had just uttered.

Twenty-nineteen. 2019. It wasn't a time, it was a date. A _year_.

"Oh, shit," Dave said, and that was it for his knees. They just weren't willing to support him anymore. He managed to stumble the couple of steps over to the cot and sink down next to the big man. "I'm in the _future_?"

"We call it the present, here," Diego said. "How do you know Lila? And Klaus?"

"I don't know Lila," Dave said. "She appeared literally out of nowhere, saved me from a maniac with a machine gun who'd _also_ appeared out of nowhere, and brought me here." He avoided the Klaus question for the moment, because he really didn't know where to begin—or what would be safe to tell these men. "How do _you_ know Klaus?"

"He's our brother," said the big man.

Dave looked at the two of them. Neither of them looked even remotely like Klaus, or like each other.

"Adopted," Diego supplied helpfully.

Which triggered a faint memory. Klaus _had_ mentioned once that he was adopted. "Uh, it's a pleasure to meet you," Dave managed, falling back on well-trained politeness. He knew he should stand up, but he didn't think he could just yet. He thrust a hand in Diego's direction. "You can call me Dave."

Diego shook his offered hand, lifting an eyebrow. "Diego. But you probably caught that."

The big man shifted over—the cot creaked and groaned—and offered Dave his hand in turn. "I'm Luther," he said. Dave's hand nearly disappeared inside Luther's, but the big man had a gentle grip.

"So, uh, if you could tell me where to find Klaus..." Dave couldn't think about what it meant that it was the year 2019. Klaus would be _how_ old? But alive, they'd just said he was _alive_...

Anyway, Klaus was a time traveler. Dave knew that, although Klaus had always been pretty vague with respect to the details. And Klaus's brothers didn't look any older than Dave himself.

"Sorry, Lila said she brought you here from when? 1975?" Diego asked. "Is that where you're from? Or did you work for the Commission?"

"I don't know what the Commission is," Dave said. "I'm from...." He didn't know how to finish that sentence. He was from a _place_ , not a time. "I was born in 1945," he decided to say. "In Texas."

"Is this your first time, er, time-traveling?" Luther asked, his eyes crinkling sympathetically.

"Oh hell yes," Dave said, with a shudder. "Uh, I don't suppose—could a guy get a cup of coffee, here? The past few minutes have been a lot."

Luther looked questioningly at Diego, and Diego shrugged and strode away. He came back a minute later with a paper cup. At least, it looked like paper—but it felt more like styrofoam in Dave's hand. Gently warm to the touch, though the coffee inside burnt Dave's tongue. It was black and bitter, like army coffee. It made Dave feel like he might still be sane.

"So you met Klaus in 1963?" Diego prompted.

"Right," Dave said. "He came into my uncle's hardware store. Told me some strange things about myself. Kind of ... left me on edge. But then he showed up again in my platoon in 'Nam in '67. Only he didn't know me. So we figured out it was later for me, but earlier for him." Dave took another steadying sip of his coffee. He'd never talked to anybody about any of this before—apart from Klaus himself, obviously. He'd always been pretty confident that if he tried, he'd end up in the loony bin.

"That checks out," Diego said to Luther. "Klaus got stuck in Vietnam for a while when he ran away from Hazel and Cha-Cha."

"Wait, what?" Luther said. "Klaus? Went to Vietnam? The Vietnam _War_?"

"Uh, yeah," Diego said. "You missed that?"

"Well, we've barely seen each other," Luther said.

"So," Dave interjected, forestalling whatever Diego had been about to say next, "Klaus came _back_ from Vietnam?"

"Sure," Diego said easily. "Why?"

A splash of hot coffee spilled over Dave's hand. He barely registered it. "I don't really understand how time travel works," he said. "I don't think I should— _fuck_ , there might be some stuff I shouldn't tell you. He's _here_ , you said? In the year two thousand nineteen? I need to see him."

"Well, I guess that's why Lila brought him here," Luther said, to Diego.

"Look, buddy," Diego said. "Dave. It's a little complicated. 2019 isn't exactly the way we left it ... and we're not sure where Klaus is."

" _Why_ do you need to see him?" Luther asked. "Does it have to do with an apocalypse?"

"Apocalypse?" Dave repeated blankly.

"Apocalypse?" Diego also repeated, looking warily at his brother.

"No?" Luther said, and shrugged. "Just checking."

"He was my ... best friend," Dave decided to say. "We went through a lot together, in the war. I just want to see him."

_And I don't know anybody else in 2019,_ he realized, with an abstraction that promised gut-wrenching terror sometime later. Do the math—1975 was, shit, what, borrow from the hundreds place, _forty-four_ years ago.

Well, he might still have a friend or two around, but they'd be old men and women. And they weren't likely to believe that he was himself.

"We should help him," Diego said to Luther. "Lila brought him to us. And what else are we doing right now?"

Luther shrugged, but looked uncomfortable. "Where would we even look for Klaus?"

"We could start at Vanya's place," Diego said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm using this story to, among other things, sort through a lot of my own thoughts and theories about The Umbrella Academy's universe. If my story sparks any thoughts or questions for you, I would be absolutely delighted to hear from you in the comments!


	2. Chapter 2

Vanya was a delicate, mousy woman with a high-ceilinged apartment. Diego and Luther introduced her as their sister, and introduced Dave as 'Klaus's friend.'

"Come in," Vanya beckoned them over the threshold. "Sorry, I haven't seen Klaus since we all got home—but would you like some tea?"

Dave said yes, politely, and perched on her sofa.

Luther sat at the other end of the sofa, wincing at its creaks.

Diego remained standing, absently spinning a knife.

"To be more specific," Diego said when Vanya came back into the room with a laden tea tray, "Dave is Klaus's friend from _the Vietnam War_."

"Oh," Vanya said with a startled look in Dave's direction. The dishes on the tray rattled, but to her credit she didn't drop anything. She set the tray on her coffee table. "Are you an agent, then?" she asked. "From the Commission?"

Dave opened his mouth to explain once again his complete lack of knowledge about what the hell was going on here, but Diego was already shaking his head and answering for him. "He says no," Diego said. "Lila dropped him off at my place just now—she had a briefcase—and she said the Commission was trying to kill him in 1975."

Vanya looked at Dave. She had kind eyes. "You just came here from 1975?" She sat in a chair, cornerwise to Dave's end of the couch.

Dave nodded, a little numbly, and sipped at his tea. Vanya had real porcelain teacups, like Dave's grandmother's set.

"What do you think of the future so far?" she asked.

"The cars look a little strange," Dave ventured. "Nothing like the Jetsons, though. So that's slightly disappointing."

"Do you know why the Commission wanted you dead?"

Dave started to shake his head, but then he remembered something that the red-booted woman had said. "Anomalies," he said. "Lila said I was spawning anomalies."

"What does that mean?" Luther asked.

Dave shrugged. "That's all she said."

"Oh!" Diego said, sounding inspiration-struck. "The Commission's all about preserving the timeline, right?"

"That's a question for Five," Vanya said. "Have you guys seen him?"

"Not since we all got back on Tuesday," Luther said.

"Five?" Dave repeated. She'd said it like a name.

"Hey, look, I know about the Commission," Diego said. "I worked for them too."

"For about ten minutes," Luther mumbled into his teacup.

"The _point_ is, I think I know what's going on here," Diego said. "Dave, while you were with Klaus in the past, did he do or say anything to you that might have caused you to take, say, dramatically different actions than if you'd never met him?"

"That would be putting it mildly," Dave said.

But meanwhile, Vanya had gone white as a sheet. "Sissy," she breathed, in a horror-struck tone. "Harlan. Oh my God." She half-stood up, and then sank back down. "It's fifty-six years ago. What exactly do I think I'm going to do?"

"Vanya, what's wrong?" Luther asked.

"If the Commission is hunting down people that we had contact with in the past—that we _changed_ —Sissy might never have left Carl if it weren't for me. Carl wouldn't be _dead_."

"Well, apparently Lila's keeping an eye on things," Diego said, clearly aiming to comfort his sister. "She saved Dave here, after all, and she'd never even _met_ him."

Vanya nodded slowly, and took a deep breath.

The teapot's lid stopped clattering.

When had it started?

"How are you doing, Vanya?" Luther asked, and the question sounded strangely loaded.

Vanya gave him a wry look. "I've been practicing control. I've been pretty busy, though, since I got back. Would you believe that in this timeline I still have my position with the symphony? Third violin, to be specific—I guess Leonard never killed Helen Cho to get me the promotion."

This was all very interesting—or, actually, mostly this was all very confusing and somewhat disturbing. But Dave had come to this apartment for a reason, which everybody else seemed to have lost sight of. "What about Klaus?" he reminded them. "If he's not here, where do you think he might be?"

Vanya shrugged, and looked at her brothers. Luther also shrugged.

Diego grimaced, and sighed. "Hospitals," he said, pointing to Vanya. "Bars," he said, pointing to Luther. "Alleyways," he said, thumbing his own clavicle. "Dave, why don't you come with me."

* * *

"How well did you know my brother?" Diego asked, once they were alone in his car. "Really?"

"Uh..." Once again, Dave hesitated well short of the truth. As flamboyant and open about his sexuality as Klaus had been in Vietnam, Dave had no idea if he was out to his family. Or if it would be safe for Dave to be, especially since without their support, he was currently homeless and destitute here in 2019. "Things are pretty intense, in a war zone," he said. "When you're fighting and dying together, I guess you're about as close as men can be."

"Sure," Diego said. "I get that. But for instance, did he tell you about the ghosts?"

"Uh huh," Dave said evenly.

"And did you know that they were _real_?" Diego was intent on the road, hands at a careful 9 and 3 on the steering wheel.

In the A Shau Valley, everyone in the unit knew about Klaus's ghosts. But Dave was the only one who knew they were real. Everyone else assumed Klaus was crazy.

It wasn't a big deal; a lot of guys were crazy in 'Nam. And if Klaus was crazier than most, well, maybe that was how he got away with being so in-your-face queer. Nobody else could pull that one off, but Klaus was their own holy fool.

Didn't hurt that he could beat any guy in their unit in hand-to-hand, either. You wouldn't think it to look at him, but Klaus could _fight_.

"Yeah," Dave said. "I knew. So you really are his brother, huh?"

"We grew up in the same house," Diego said. "Called the same man 'dad.'"

"With Luther and Vanya," Dave added, trying to get a picture here.

"There were seven of us," Diego said. "To start with, anyway. Klaus didn't tell you about us?"

Dave shook his head. "Not really. I knew he had siblings, but he never mentioned any of your names."

"That's okay," Diego said with a shrug. "I didn't like to talk about it much after I got out, either."

"Got out?" Dave repeated. That wasn't usually the way people referred to a family.

"The Umbrella Academy," Diego said. "He never—? Eh. Doesn't matter. Doesn't even exist anymore." He checked his rear view mirror and braked into a slow roll. He peered out into the alley they were passing. "We should probably park and take it on foot from here," he said.

"So we're literally looking in alleys?" Dave asked, feeling a coil of serious worry settle in his stomach. Today—well, the past hour or so—had been such a roller coaster ride, he hadn't even thought much yet about the implications of Diego's suggested search patterns. "Is that, um, where you think we're _likely_ to find him?"

"Well, I don't love our odds," Diego said, pulling into a parking spot. "There's a lot of alleys. And if he found somebody to go home with, we're not finding him till he comes up for air. Best idea I've got is shake down some dealers, check if anybody's seen him." He yanked the parking brake and looked sideways at Dave. "And again I ask: how well did you know my brother?"

And, shit. Some part of Dave had been thinking about this ever since Diego told Vanya to check the hospitals and Luther to check the bars. "I knew he was a junkie," Dave said quietly.

Klaus had had track marks on his arms when he'd appeared in the barracks. Dave hadn't known what they were, but some of the other guys had pointed it out, in whispers behind Klaus's back—mostly wild speculations about where he'd managed to get stuff in the middle of a deployment.

And Klaus had been sick a lot in his first week in 'Nam, which Dave had eventually realized was drug withdrawal. But so many guys were sick there for so many reasons—food poisoning, tropical diseases—Klaus's symptoms hadn't even registered at the level of their commanding officers giving a shit.

Over the next ten months—over their whole life together—when there had been alcohol to drink, Klaus had drunk it. When there had been drugs to take, Klaus had taken them. Dave hadn't been too easy with all that, but it was part of the package that was Klaus. And Klaus had explained about the ghosts.

"So you know why we're checking the alleys," Diego said, grimly.

They didn't speak in the next three blocks' worth of searching. Dave was lost in his thoughts; maybe Diego was, too.

The sun was bright but the air was chilly; Dave had goosebumps under his shirtsleeves, and his hands were going numb. Diego and Luther had never mentioned what city they were actually in, and Dave didn't recognize any landmarks, but clearly they were somewhere up North. It was early April, they'd said.

Time travel. Fucking hell.

The cars looked weird. Peoples' clothes looked weird. The signs on the store fronts were an odd kind of bright, and—was this a strange thing to get hung up on?—the lettering was all wrong. The shapes of the letters.

The fonts of the future were jarring him.

"How long ago did Klaus get back from Vietnam?" Dave thought to ask, after something like the sixth empty trash-strewn alley. Maybe he should've asked it earlier, but this time travel shit was confusing as hell and he'd had a lot of shocks today.

"Two and a half months," Diego said.

Dave stumbled over a cracked sidewalk slab in his shock. Just a couple of _months_?

"No, wait, sorry, that's from my point of view," Diego said. "For Klaus, it'll have been, uh, when did he say he landed in Dallas? Three years. Something like three years, I guess. God damn it, does that make him my big brother now?"

"Three years," Dave repeated, trying to make sense of it. So that was good news, actually. It had been a few years for both of them. It wouldn't be too unbalanced when they reconnected...

"I mean, technically from a fixed perspective, it's only been about a week," Diego added. "Man, time travel makes my head hurt. How did Five keep it all straight? How long's it been for you, anyway?"

"Seven years," Dave said. "I mean, seven years since I saw Klaus. I stayed in 'Nam right up until the final withdrawal in '73."

"Which was ... _two_ years ago, for you," Diego said with a grin. "See, I'm getting this."

"Who's Five?" Dave asked.

"Long story," Diego said. "Tell you later. Gonna talk to this chump right now."

A man in a soft-looking brown hooded sweatshirt was leaning against a wall just inside an alley, reading a battered paperback book.

"Hey," Diego said, getting right up in the man's face in one smooth step and grabbing the collar of his sweatshirt, "You sold to Klaus lately?"

The guy went rigid. The hand that wasn't holding the book tightened into a fist. Dave felt his own stance loosening automatically into something he could fight from.

"Who wants to know?" said the guy.

"His brother," Diego said, twisting the cloth in his fist and reaching behind his back with his other hand. The knife he'd been playing with at Vanya's place—or one like it—slid out into his hand. Dave swallowed nervously. "So you just tell me what you know," Diego went on, "and nobody has to get hurt."

"Sure, fuck, yes, I sold him some shit last week," the guy said, lifting his chin against Diego's grip and squirming up onto his toes. "Ain't seen him since then. Get the fuck off me."

Diego dropped the guy, scowled, and strode away. Dave gave a quick glance back at the dealer and then followed Diego.

"Useless," Diego muttered. "That's three years ago on Klaus's timeline."

Dave was still struggling with this timeline thing, to be honest. He wished he had a piece of paper he could take notes on. "Hey, you said you just got back from 1963," he remembered. " _When_ in 1963?"

"The fucking Kennedy assassination," Diego said. "Which I failed to prevent. You ever think to yourself, oh, man, if I had a time machine, the things I could fix? Take my advice. Stop thinking it."

"The actual day of the assassination?" Dave asked. "November 22nd?"

"Yeah," Diego said. "That's when we left. Three days ago."

"I saw Klaus on the 20th," Dave said. Not like he was ever going to forget that date—two days before the most infamous date in American history. "He tried to save my life. I yelled at him. That was five days ago, for him. _Fuck_."

Diego shrugged. "A lot of people yell at Klaus. For a lot of good reasons. What do you mean, he tried to save your life?"

"We still have to find him," Dave said, both because it was true and to change the subject. He was still a little leery of openly discussing his time travel paradoxes with Klaus's brother. Hadn't Diego actually said something offhand at Vanya's place about _working_ for that Commission organization? The one that sent out assassins to protect the timeline?

"Right," Diego said.

"Maybe we should try asking the police?" Dave suggested. Not that he wanted to get Klaus in trouble—but if Klaus was already in trouble, which seemed highly possible, Dave sure wanted to get him out of it.

Diego sighed. "I don't think so. I'm not on such great terms with the police. I used to have a friend on the force that I could ask for help, but—" he stopped walking so abruptly that Dave shot three feet past him before he realized. "Oh my _God_ ," Diego said. "Holy _shit_. Vanya is third violin. Eudora could be alive!"

"What?" Dave asked, but Diego had taken off running.

Dave had no choice but to follow. If he got left behind here, in a strange city in 2019 with no money and no contacts—well, he really had no idea what he'd do.

They ran flat-out six blocks to a police station. Dave caught up, gasping, just as Diego blew past reception and straight into the bullpen. Dave gave an apologetic grin to the uniform at the front desk and followed Diego in.

Diego had drawn up alongside a desk with the nameplate 'Det. Eudora Patch'. A young, neatly-dressed Hispanic lady was leaning back in the chair, looking up at Diego with a quizzical expression.

"Eudora," Diego gasped. "You're okay!"

"Yes, Diego," she said, with what sounded like well-trained patience. "Is there some reason I wouldn't be?"

"And you remember me!"

"Again—is this surprising, for some reason?"

"Oh my God," Diego said, and pulled her up into a bone-crunching hug.

Eudora—Detective Patch?—suffered the hug for a good fifteen seconds with a puzzled but tender expression before pulling back and saying, "What's with you today, Diego? Anyway, you shouldn't be here. I'm not off shift until seven o'clock."

"Sh-sure," Diego said. "I j-j- _just_ wh-WH- _wanted_ to s-see you."

Eudora looked at Diego with dawning concern. "Is something wrong?"

Dave thought he knew what was going on, and it wasn't something that Eudora was likely to guess.

This was a person that Diego loved. And she had died in another timeline.

Dave was something of an expert in that kind of thing, come to think of it.

"We need your help," he interjected. "Diego's brother is missing."

Eudora frowned at Diego. "Your brother? You never told me you had a brother."

"No, I didn't," Diego said. "I never talked about my family at all ... right?"

"Not very much," Eudora said, looking at him weirdly. Which was fair, because it was a weird question, if you didn't know that Diego was trying to figure out how the timeline he remembered matched up with the timeline that Eudora remembered.

When they finally found Klaus, Dave promised himself, they would have a 100% honest and open discussion about divergent timelines. It would be fun.

"His name is Klaus," Dave contributed quickly. "He's about this tall—" showing with his hand "—dark hair, it's long and curly, and a beard—" Trying to remember what Klaus had looked like 12 years ago in Dallas. Five days ago. It wasn't entirely easy. But then, he hadn't looked all _that_ different in Vietnam. Shorter hair, is all. Fewer tattoos.

"Oh, _Klaus_ ," Eudora said to Diego. "Your train wreck of an ex. Why did you tell this guy he was your brother?"

"M-my _ex_?" Diego stammered, looking appalled.

"Can you help us look for him?" Dave asked quickly, to save them all from going down that very disturbing rabbit-hole.

"When did he go missing?" Eudora asked.

"Three days ago," Dave said. That's when Diego, Luther and Vanya all said they'd last seen him.

Eudora looked back at Diego. "Doesn't he normally vanish for months at a time?"

"Sure," Diego said. "But we've got reason to believe he's gone on a bender. He could be in trouble."

Eudora frowned delicately. "And again—how is that different from normal?"

Diego shuffled his feet, looking a little uncomfortable. "Ah, he's had a bit of a rough time lately. He lost somebody, sort of. He might be lacking even his usual tiny smidge of self-preservation."

"Well, we're having a quiet day here," Eudora said with a bit of a sigh. "I don't think you have grounds for a missing-persons, but I can take, say, an extended coffee break, and help you pound the pavement for a bit. Do you have a recent photo of Klaus that we could show around?"

Diego frowned. "Ah, no. Er, I don't think so."

"Actually, maybe I can help with that," Dave volunteered, pitching his voice for Diego's ears alone. "If you could get me to a library?"

* * *

It wasn't hard. Take any newspaper in the goddamn country, look at page two on November 23rd, 1963.

Dave gently twiddled the knob on the microfilm reader. And there they were. America's most wanted. "Hey," he said in surprise. "That's you." The grainy photo of Diego looked like it could have been taken yesterday. Which it basically _had_ been, relatively speaking. "And Luther! And Vanya!" He hadn't recognized them when he saw them in person—it had been twelve years along his own timeline since he'd seen these pictures, and back in 1963 he'd only been interested in the one of Klaus.

"Jesus," Diego said. "Are we infamous, now? Is this going to be a problem?"

"I don't think so," Dave said. "This was a long time ago. Nobody's going to connect you. Nobody but me even recognized Klaus when he showed up in 'Nam, and that was only four years later. Out of context, you see." He scrolled the film up carefully so that Klaus's picture was centered. "Hey, do you know these other folks?"

Diego sighed. "Sure. My other sister and brother. You've got our whole family album there."

"Huh," Dave said, looking at them. A Black woman who looked about the same age as the others, and a pale, dark-haired young teenager. "Hey, wouldn't it be a good idea to check in with them? Maybe one of them knows where Klaus is."

Diego shook his head. "Allison headed to the West Coast just about as soon as we landed, to check on her daughter. And Five's—I dunno. Bopping around, doing his thing. Trying to figure out what's up with the Sparrow Academy. We'll see him when we see him, and not before."

The microfilm reader had a coin-operated printer attached. Dave didn't have any coins on him—his wallet had been sitting on the work desk in 1975, and hadn't make the trip with him—but Diego, luckily, did.

"Why do you keep calling your little brother 'Five'?" Dave asked, while the page printed. "Isn't he technically the sixth one?"

"He's not my little brother," Diego said. "We're all exactly the same age. Or—we _were_ , when we were kids. What with all this time travel, we're all different ages now I guess. Five's the oldest by far."

Dave plucked the warm page carefully from the printer and flapped it in the air to help the ink dry. "So he's had a few adventures since this picture was taken?"

"Nah," Diego said. "That was literally three days ago. He's an old man trapped in a young boy's body. He's pretty cranky about it."

"Hm," Dave said, not sure what to say to that.

Maybe he wasn't one to talk, what with the most important event of his life having been a paradoxical time-travel love affair with a man who saw ghosts—but Klaus's family was _weird_.

Dave carefully creased the paper and ripped it on the folds, separating Klaus's photo from the others. "You should probably burn the rest of this," he said, handing the scraps to Diego. "Or eat it, or whatever. I assume you don't want Eudora to see it. Unless she knows about the time travel...?"

"I don't think she knows about any of it," Diego said, as they headed out of the library. "I never told her I was from the Umbrella Academy, in the other timeline. In this timeline, who the hell knows. But I don't think so."

"The Umbrella Academy," Dave repeated. Diego had mentioned it earlier, too. "That was that brutal private school Klaus went to, right? He had that tattoo." He tapped his own wrist in the place where Klaus's tattoo was.

Diego briefly flashed the inside of his own wrist. He also had the tattoo. "You could call it that, I guess," he said. "Anyway, it doesn't seem to exist in this timeline."

"Hey," Dave said. "About ... uh, when Eudora called Klaus your ex. In this timeline, did you ever—"

Diego cut him off with a gagging noise. "Ew, ew, ew, stop right there. He's my _brother_. My fucking _brother_ , you hear me?"

"Sure," Dave said, raising his open hands in a cautious gesture of pacification. The last thing he wanted was to trigger a homophobic panic attack in Klaus's brother, or get in a fight with him.

But Diego quieted quickly, and resumed their brisk walk back towards his car. "Hey," he said sort of pensively a minute or so later, "If I really did date Klaus in a different timeline where we weren't brothers—I mean, _gross_ , but if I did—does that mean I'm bi?"

"Uh—" Dave stuttered. "I have no idea. Time travel. It's confusing, right?" He worried at his lip, a little. "Do you think you might be?" he dared to ask.

"Dunno," Diego said, pensively. "I mean, I can appreciate the male form just fine. Never wanted to _date_ a guy, though."

Diego seemed surprisingly relaxed about his own potential bisexuality. Maybe, Dave reflected, Diego's strong reaction a moment ago had only been to the incest taboo, and not to the gayness.

"What about ... if you knew about a guy who did. Want to date guys," Dave ventured, cautiously. "I mean, would that be a problem?"

Diego stopped. They'd reached the car. He looked back at Dave with a raised eyebrow and a faint smile. "Sorry, are you trying to come out to me?"

"Ah..." Dave's throat felt like it had closed up, and his cheeks were burning.

"Just to be clear— _were_ you and Klaus lovers? I mean, I assumed you were, with the dog tags and everything, but you've been talking like you were just friends, and—well, I guess Klaus _could_ have a friend, hypothetically speaking."

"Ah..." Dave said again, and swallowed with difficulty. "I wasn't sure..." he managed, "what would be safe to tell you."

"Huh?" Diego said. And then, " _Oh_. Hey." He grinned wide, and clapped a hand to Dave's shoulder. Squeezed. "Welcome to the future. That stuff isn't such a big deal anymore. I mean, it's not totally a _not_ -big deal, you might still want to be careful in some places, but—I mean, you could get married now."

And now Dave was confused. Or Diego was confused? "No, I don't _want_ to get married," Dave said. "I love ... men." He was shocked to hear it coming right out of his mouth, just plain like that, but this conversation had really thrown him off balance.

This whole day had.

"Right," Diego said. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. You and Klaus could get married, if you wanted to. Legally."

"Huh?"

"You know what?" Diego said, going around the car to open the driver's side door. "I should probably catch you up on some world history on the way back to the police station."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding Dave's time in Vietnam:
> 
> Sometime after completing and posting this fic, I became aware that tours in Vietnam during that war always lasted exactly a year. However, you could volunteer to go back for another one. So, when Dave says he stayed in Vietnam through 1973, please assume either:
> 
> a) he actually means that he did multiple tours
> 
> or
> 
> b) um, this is an AU anyway (even canonically), so maybe that thing about tours only lasting for a year isn't true in this timeline!
> 
> (The important thing for you to note is that it _is not possible_ that the author made a mistake. Got that? Good!)


	3. Chapter 3

Detective Patch was good at her job. She found Klaus in the space of an hour.

He was unconscious on a dirty mattress, on the second floor of a boarded-up abandoned house. He was wearing a lightweight black trench coat, but it was open over his bare chest. Black jeans, bare feet. He had a tattoo on his belly, roughly triangular with Thai symbols. He hadn't had it in Vietnam, but Dave thought he remembered it from when he'd first seen Klaus, in 1963.

Dave was having a little trouble remembering to breathe. And he seemed to be holding Diego's hand, somehow. Clutching it hard.

Eudora was checking Klaus's pulse, at his neck.

"He's alive," she said after a moment.

Dave's breath came whooshing dizzily back into him. He might have fallen down if Diego hadn't grabbed him around the shoulders.

"Hang on, buddy," Diego said, peering into Dave's eyes. "He's come through worse than this."

Eudora was rolling Klaus onto his side, patting the mattress around him. She was holding her flashlight tucked between her neck and shoulder. At some point during their search, the sun had gone down. They'd tried the light switches when they first came into the house, but unsurprisingly the place didn't have power. "I don't see any paraphernalia," Eudora said. "I'm thinking pills. We should take him to a hospital, get his stomach pumped."

"We don't have the money for that," Diego said grimly. "At least, I don't think we do."

"They can't refuse to treat him in a life-or-death situation," Eudora said. "And I can show my badge."

But Diego, shaking his head, had already let go of Dave and moved to crouch next to the mattress. He tucked his hands under Klaus's shoulders and maneuvered his limp form up into something resembling a sitting position.

"I really don't think that's a good idea—" Eudora started to say, as Diego stuck two fingers down the back of Klaus's throat.

"Uh, he doesn't have much of a gag reflex," Dave warned Diego, moving closer. Reaching out a hand, but not touching. Useless, he was _useless_ , and if he'd miraculously found Klaus again only to lose him immediately, _fuck_...

"I know," Diego said calmly, and stuck his fingers in further.

And suddenly Klaus was choking and heaving. Diego withdrew his hand in a flash, and held Klaus upright while he puked.

Dave winced in sympathy, but you didn't come out of 'Nam with your squeamishness intact. When Eudora played her flashlight over the little puddle of vomit, Dave didn't look away. It was clear, and there wasn't much of it. Nothing that looked like pills.

"Dammit," Diego said. "They must've all passed into his system already."

Klaus's head lolled from one side to the other, once, and he let out a faint moan. His eyes didn't open.

"I _really_ don't think that was a good idea," Eudora said again, frowning at Diego. "I was trying to tell you—I think he's hypothermic. He could easily have a heart attack in this state. We absolutely need to get him to a hospital."

Diego shook his head, and scooped Klaus up cradle-style in his arms. "I'm taking him to Vanya's," he said. "She can—if he really needs help. She can do it."

"Who's Vanya?" Eudora asked. Despite her stated reservations, she did helpfully shine her flashlight in front of Diego's feet to light his way.

"His sister," Dave said, trailing behind and feeling useless. He kind of thought, on some level, that carrying Klaus to safety should be _his_ job.

"Klaus's?" Eudora said.

"Uh, yeah."

"And she's a doctor? Nurse? Paramedic?"

"Not ... exactly," Diego said, and didn't clarify. Anyway, they'd reached Diego's car, and that required all hands on deck.

Diego deposited Klaus on the back seat with a deft gentleness that Dave appreciated. The guy had to be crazy strong, to manage it without even looking awkward. Dave joined Klaus in the back seat without saying a word.

Eudora took shotgun, also without consulting anybody. Diego gave her a wary look as he slid in beside the wheel, like he was seriously doubting the wisdom of bringing her along. He didn't say anything though; he just turned on the heater full blast, and drove.

Klaus.

Was here.

In Dave's arms.

His hair was soft. His lips, slack with unconsciousness, still managed to curl up a little into that maddening pixie grin of his. He smelled terrible—sour sweat and a whiff of vomit. It might as well have been roses; Dave couldn't help burying his face in Klaus's tousled curls and breathing deep.

Klaus was absolutely limp; apart from that one brief moan after Diego made him puke, he hadn't yet given any signs of life. Other than the pulse, that was, and Dave found himself checking that obsessively as Diego drove.

Klaus was fucked up, that was a fact. But he was breathing, and his chest was smoothly whole, which meant he was in 100% better shape than the last time Dave had held him in his arms.

Even though Klaus was a time traveler, even though younger-Dave had met older-Klaus in 1963—Dave had assumed, after he sat all night on Hill 689 with Klaus's dead body, that he would never see Klaus again in this life.

Dave had never been prone to flashbacks. Not like some guys. He _remembered_ sometimes, is all, and was sad. Now he smelled mud and blood along with the sweat and bile, but the tears streaming down his face were a confusion of fear, hope, and joy.

* * *

"You found him," Vanya said when she opened the door. She stepped back immediately, to give Dave and his armful of Klaus an unimpeded path over the threshold.

He'd taken the initiative and lifted Klaus out of the car while Diego was still coming around from the other side. Now Diego and Eudora were trailing after him. Diego very briefly introduced Eudora to Vanya as they entered, just "My friend, she's a cop, she helped find Klaus."

Dave deposited Klaus gently on Vanya's sofa. "We need blankets," he said. "Do you have any hot water bottles?"

"He's ... cold?" Vanya asked, looking back over her shoulder as she headed towards the back of the apartment, hopefully to get what Dave had asked for. "What happened?"

"He's high," Diego said. "Probably. On pills or something. But maybe hypothermic too. He was passed out in an unheated house for God knows how long."

Vanya, coming back into the room with an arm full of blankets, blanched. "Shouldn't you have taken him to a hospital, in that case?" she asked.

"That's what I keep saying," Eudora interjected.

"I thought, in the worst case scenario, you could ... you know. Like with Harlan by the lake," Diego said.

Vanya looked appalled. "I really hope it doesn't come to that." She left the room again, and a moment later there was a sound of a bathtub starting to fill. "He'll warm up faster in the bath," Vanya declared, coming back. "Can somebody get his clothes off?"

They removed Klaus's clothes in a cooperative effort, which everyone seemed to deal with pretty dispassionately except for Diego, who kept clearing his throat and averting his eyes. Eudora took the opportunity to examine Klaus's arms and legs and even between his toes, which from their expressions, Vanya found puzzling and Diego didn't. Dave figured she was looking for evidence of intravenous drug use—and, as far as he could see, not finding any. So that was something, at least.

"Have you heard back from Luther?" Diego asked at one point.

"He checked in an hour ago," Vanya said. "He hadn't found Klaus—obviously. He said he'd come back again after the bars close, if he hasn't found him yet."

Undressing accomplished, Dave carried Klaus to Vanya's bathroom.

"We've got to be careful not to _drown_ him," Eudora said, following anxiously. "I'm not sure anyone's really thinking this through—"

"I've got this," Dave assured her. He toed off his shoes on the tile floor, and then stepped carefully into the tub, fully-clothed, Klaus still limp in his arms.

Vanya's tub was old-fashioned and luxuriously deep. Claw feet and all. The water was still only halfway full when he got in, so even with himself and Klaus submerged to chest height, the water didn't quite slosh over the rim.

The heat prickled against Dave's skin. He kept one arm wrapped around Klaus's chest, and the other supporting Klaus's head more or less upright, propped against Dave's shoulder and neck. "There we go," he said quietly. "I've got you."

"Do you have a thermometer?" Eudora asked Vanya.

Vanya nodded, and brought one out of the cabinet behind the mirror.

Eudora sat on the rim of the tub and tucked the red bulb under Klaus's tongue. She held the glass wand by its very tip, delicately keeping it in place, and checked her wristwatch.

Everybody, Diego included, seemed to be okay ignoring Klaus's genitalia waving gently in the water's currents. Since Klaus was the least body-shy person Dave had ever met, Dave didn't worry that this would bother him if he woke up.

_When._ When he woke up.

Eudora lowered her watch and withdrew the thermometer for inspection. "Ninety-two degrees," she said. "Are you _sure_ you don't want to take him to a hospital?"

"Nah, we got this," Diego said. "But you can leave if you want."

Eudora rolled her eyes. "And have to come back later to investigate the charges of criminal negligence causing death? No thanks. I'll just stay."

Vanya sat on the closed toilet lid, and briefly pressed her face to her palms, elbows propped on her knees. Everybody looked at her. "How did he get like this?" she asked after a moment, raising her head.

"He had three days," Diego said. "Klaus can take a lot of drugs in three days."

"Obviously, yes," Vanya said. "That's not what I meant."

"Are you still having memory problems?" Diego asked. "He got like this because of his shitty childhood. And because his built-in support system—that none of us actually knew that he had—just vanished."

Vanya nodded, bit her lip, and said, "Ben," like Diego had just explained everything.

"We probably should have thought of that," Diego added, "before we let him fuck off on his own on Tuesday."

"Who's Ben?" Dave asked, trying not to feel romantically threatened. There was a lot, a _lot_ about Klaus's life that Dave didn't know.

He didn't even know if Klaus would be happy to see him, when he got right down to it. Dave thought he would. He _hoped_ he would. The painful scene at Klaus's manor in Dallas had been only a few days ago from Klaus's perspective, and as bad as that had been, it had definitely shown that Klaus still cared about Dave.

But none of that mattered as much as the need for Klaus to wake up and be okay. So Dave was fine with pushing the rest of it to the back burner for now.

Meanwhile, Vanya was saying: "Ben was number six,"—like that should somehow be a meaningful statement to Dave—

—but then with a fizz-pop, a young teenager in schoolboy clothes blinked into existence in the middle of the bathroom.

Eudora screamed. A full-throated, horror-movie yell, ending with her back pressed against the tile wall and her gun outstretched in her hands.

Diego came at her sideways, gently, and ran a hand from her shoulder down her arm to the gun. She didn't resist as Diego plucked the gun away from her. "You don't want the paperwork," he said quietly.

"Oh good," the boy said, meanwhile. "Three of you in one place. What's with the civilians?"

The boy. The old man. This was the infamous number Five. He looked exactly like he had in the 1963 newspaper photo.

"You ever consider popping up _outside_ the door, and _knocking_?" Diego asked, irately.

"Where's the fun in that?" Five asked, oozing smarm. He looked around again. "I'd ask why you're all crammed together in the bathroom with Klaus passed out naked in the tub, but I can probably guess and anyway I don't care. Do you know where Luther is?"

"Canvassing bars," Vanya said. "Looking for Klaus."

"Okay, I'll get him," Five said. He raised his fists, both in front of him, as though about to double-punch someone in the gut.

"What—" Eudora choked out. " _What—_ "

The corner of Five's mouth pulled up in an exasperated-looking grin. "Get the civilians up to speed or ditch them," he said. He punched forward, and popped out of existence.

Eudora shrieked again, but it seemed a little more perfunctory this time.

"I am _so_ sorry," Diego said to her. "I probably should have told you about all this a long time ago."

"All _what_?" Eudora asked, wide-eyed and still pressed hard back against the wall.

And Dave had a brief, _brief_ smug feeling of actually being in the know, until Vanya gave a sheepish little wave and said, "We're his adopted siblings and we all have superpowers."

"Wait, superpowers?" Dave repeated. "I thought you just time traveled."

" _Time_ travel?" Eudora repeated, looking wildly at Dave.

"I'm not one of the siblings," he added for clarification. "I basically just got here. From 1975."

"Five can teleport," Diego said. "As you've just seen. And I can bend force vectors in midair with my mind. That's why I'm so good with knives. I can also deflect bullets if I have a little warning."

"Huh," Eudora said. And looked thoughtful. "Actually, that _does_ explain a thing or two."

"I can make shock waves," Vanya said. She tilted her head towards her toothbrush cup. The toothbrush suddenly rattled and clattered wildly around in the mug for a second before abruptly growing still. "Like that. But also bigger."

"And she can raise the dead," Diego added. "Which is why it was better to bring Klaus here instead of the hospital."

Vanya frowned. "The _recently_ dead. One time. Actually Harlan might not have been clinically dead yet. I think I really just acted like a magical defibrillator."

"Well, we're only really worried about Klaus's heart stopping," Diego said. "So that's perfect."

From her expression, Eudora was finding this exchange only a tiny bit less disturbing than Dave was. "Does Klaus have a power?" she asked.

"He sees ghosts," Diego said.

"Would you call that a superpower?" Dave asked. "Really?" It had always seemed more like an affliction.

"Our dad did," Vanya said.

There was a swoosh-pop in the hallway, and a knock on the door.

Diego, who was closest, opened it. Luckily it opened outward into the hall.

Five was standing there, wearing his apparently-customary wry expression. "See?" he said. "I can be well-mannered."

"Also there's no way Luther is fitting in this bathroom," Diego observed. Luther was standing behind Five in the hallway, looking a little off-balance and clearly trying to make himself more diminutive, unsuccessfully.

Luther broke into a relieved smile as he looked past Diego. "You _did_ find him."

"And this is Luther," Diego said to Eudora. "He's just ridiculously strong."

"I notice the civilians are still here," Five said. "I take that to mean that you've briefed them, and there won't be any more tedious screaming?"

"I'm good, I'm good," Eudora said, though her eyes were still more than normally wide. "I get it. You're like the Sparrow Academy kids, but ... secret."

Five rounded on her with a delighted grin and a pointed finger. "Hold that thought." He looked back at Diego and Vanya. "You brought in someone familiar with the locally instantiated timeline. Good _job_ , team. You're not as useless as I thought."

"Ah, this is my old friend Detective Eudora Patch," Diego said. "From my Police Academy days."

"Pleased to meet you," Five said with a sketchy little bow. "I'll have a lot of questions for you, very soon. But first—" he waved a hand at Dave but looked at Diego and Vanya, "—who's this one?"

"David J. Katz," Dave said for himself.

"Klaus's boyfriend from the Vietnam War," Diego said, with an air like he was trying to get one up on Five for once.

"Huh," Five said. Not exactly taken aback, but at least losing momentum for a moment. "Okay. When did _that_ happen? Relatively speaking."

"Before the _first_ apocalypse," Diego said, and shot Five a tight grin, more of a bared-teeth thing than a smile.

"Not relevant to our current situation, then," Five said, barreling right over both Dave's and Eudora's yelps of ' _first_ apocalypse?'. "Can you wake Klaus up?"

"No," Eudora said firmly. "We can't. It would be dangerous to try. We have to let his body temperature get back to normal."

"Oh, _that's_ why he's in the tub," Five said. "I admit, that wasn't my first guess. What happened to him?"

"Drug overdose in an unheated room," Diego said.

"Uh huh, that sounds like Klaus," Five said. He looked around, scowling. "I don't want to have to run through this more than once. I'll check back in the morning and see if he's awake." He lifted his fists and swoosh-popped away.

* * *

After that, time seemed to go slower. Not in a literal time travel kind of way, but just in that the frequency at which Dave got slammed by incomprehensible new events and information slowed right down.

Luther went away again, and came back with takeout food in little boxes for everybody. Surprisingly, the dishes were Vietnamese. Dave quizzed Eudora about that, about whether the war had ended differently than he remembered. By now he'd figured out that she was the only person present who was familiar with the local timeline in its current incarnation. Anyway, as far as she could recall, everything had gone just as he'd experienced it, up through the evacuation of Saigon—which Dave had actually been a part of. Her memory of the details was shaky, though, and it was unsettling for Dave to contemplate the fact that the whole thing was a historical event to her, finished long before she was born. As for the food, both Eudora and the Hargreeves siblings assured him that since 1975, America had simply become more diverse, culinarily and otherwise.

Eudora kept checking Klaus's temperature every ten minutes, and Dave breathed a little easier every time as it slowly rose. When it finally hit 98 degrees, a family + Dave + Eudora meeting was convened in which it was agreed that Klaus would be dried off and moved to Vanya's bed, Dave would be placed naked in bed beside him to make sure he stayed warm, and Vanya, Luther and Diego would take turns staying awake and standing watch in the bedroom.

Part of the calculation there was that Dave had been awake far longer than anyone else—it had been late evening when Lila had grabbed him in Dallas, and late morning when she'd deposited him here. Even in the tub, he was nodding off. He was going to fall asleep hard, soon, and he wouldn't be able to notice and react if Klaus suddenly had a medical emergency.

Of all the disorienting things that had happened to Dave in the past 12 hours, maybe the biggest one was going from a world where he could go to _jail_ for loving a man, to one where his male lover's siblings offered to tuck him into bed with their brother and watch over them protectively while they slept.

He was too tired to think about it very deeply. But it seemed like a welcome change.


	4. Chapter 4

Dave woke to sunlight, and the feeling that he'd had a very strange dream.

And then he opened his eyes, and saw Klaus beside him, and knew it hadn't been a dream at all.

"Good morning," Luther said. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, with a book on his lap. "There's coffee in the kitchen, if you want. And bagels."

Dave sat up, and considered his nakedness under the blanket. "Uh," he said, "where are my clothes?"

"Oh, right," Luther said. "I'll be right back."

"Wait—" Dave said quickly. "Did Klaus wake up at all?"

Luther shook his head, looking a little glum, and left.

So Dave lay back down beside Klaus, and traced his jawline with light fingers.

Klaus was breathing softly. It looked like normal sleep. Dave felt like he should be able to shake him gently and wake him up. He didn't, though. He didn't want to risk it.

"Here," Luther said, coming back in and handing Dave a bundle of folded clothes. "Get dressed, and then I'll stay and watch him while you have some breakfast."

Luther once again left Dave for privacy, and Dave proceeded to get dressed. The clothes were a little stiff and wrinkled, but fully dry. His short-sleeved, blue and white checkered cotton shirt. Khaki pants. Leather belt, which probably would have been better off without hours of water immersion yesterday. Slightly ragged white underwear, and by God if he'd known how many people would be seeing his skivvies when he got dressed yesterday (forty-four years ago), he definitely would have worn a newer pair. Brown socks. That, plus the shoes, made everything he owned in the world now. He didn't even have his watch—he'd laid it on the desk in the shop while he worked on his circuit board.

Vanya was in the kitchen. Diego was on the couch, apparently asleep.

Vanya handed Dave a mug of coffee. It was a lot better than the coffee Diego had given him in the boiler room yesterday. Rich and fragrant, it was honestly one of the best cups of coffee Dave had had in his life. "Eudora went home last night after we put you to bed," Vanya mentioned. "She said she'll come back after her shift today. We'll see if she does. I think we can be a little ... much. How are you holding up?"

"Pinching myself to make sure it isn't a dream," Dave admitted.

"I've felt like a sleepwalker most of my life," Vanya said in reply. "I only woke up ... three days ago, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" Dave asked.

Vanya gave a little shrug and poured herself a cup of coffee. "My father kept me sedated to suppress my powers," she said, stirring some milk in. "And as soon as I got over that, I spent a month with amnesia."

"Um," Dave said. "Wow. That sounds rough."

"I'm guessing Klaus never mentioned me," Vanya said to him, and then gave him a look like it was a loaded question.

"He never really told me about any of you," Dave replied honestly. "He always went _extremely_ light on biographical details. I figured that was normal for a time traveler. Anyway, it's not like we had a lot of time to talk. There wasn't much privacy in the barracks, and when we _did_ manage a moment alone, we..." he blushed, "usually used it for something else."

"So you don't really know him," Vanya said, looking serious.

"I didn't say that." Dave felt obscurely offended. "He didn't _tell_ me who he was, but he _showed_ me. You can't even imagine how he transformed my experience of Vietnam. Nothing was the same, after he got there."

"No, I think I can imagine," Vanya said dryly. "Klaus does tend to pull focus. When he's awake, anyway."

"You sound like you don't really like him," Dave observed.

Vanya looked a little abashed. "No, it's not that," she said. "Or, maybe it is, a little. It's complicated. Our family is complicated."

It was on Dave's tongue to say that lots of families were complicated, but then he thought about what he'd seen so far of the Hargreeves siblings, and decided to keep his mouth shut. He nodded, instead.

"I was the useless one without powers," Vanya said. "At least, that's what we all believed at the time. Growing up. Klaus was the useless one _with_ powers. I was furiously jealous of him because he was inside and I was outside. He excluded me just as harshly as the others did, maybe more so, because that's how he could prove that he was one of them."

"That doesn't sound like the Klaus I know," Dave said carefully.

Vanya shrugged. "He grew up. We all did. Siblings can be terrible to each other when they're young and then turn into pretty reasonable people later. I haven't seen much of him since Dad's death brought us all back together, but what I've seen, I've pretty much liked. He's sweet now. And funny. And—" she shook her head with a faint, inward-looking smile. "Until I fell in love with a woman in 1963, I don't think it occurred to me how much being queer had _also_ pushed Klaus into outsider status, on top of everything else."

Dave eyed her over his coffee. "Diego told me it's better now," he said.

"Than 1963?" Vanya said. "Absolutely. Leaps and bounds. But there are still limits, and Klaus transgresses them. You know, we had schoolkid uniforms. The boys—you saw Five last night. Allison and I wore skirts. Klaus borrowed my skirt one time and tried to wear it on a mission. Dad—well, I don't know what he did. But Klaus was very quiet for the next few days, and he never tried it again." She sipped at her coffee, looking thoughtful.

And then a buzzer sounded, and she turned toward the apartment's front door. "Huh," she said, padding sock-footed out into the living room. "I'm not expecting anyone. Oh shit, do I still have students?" She pressed a button in a panel on the wall, and then she opened the door.

Dave hadn't followed her out of the kitchen, so he couldn't see who was there. But he heard Vanya's pleased murmur of, "Allison? I didn't expect you back so soon."

The final Hargreeves crossed the threshold and gave Vanya a hug. She'd changed her hair and clothes since the 1963 newspaper photo—her hair framed her face now in a wild, curly cloud.

Allison started to say something, and then obviously spotted Diego sleeping on the couch, and covered her mouth. She followed Vanya back out to the kitchen, tiptoeing on her shiny brown high-heeled boots.

"Hey," she said to Dave when she noticed him, with a neutrally surprised expression. "Hi. Um..."

"David J. Katz," Dave said, sticking out his hand. "I'm Klaus's friend."

"Boyfriend," Vanya glossed, and shot Dave an encouraging smile. "You really don't need to hide it, here. It's okay."

Allison accepted the handshake, with an arched eyebrow that screamed 'tell me more.'

"Actually," Dave said, "I'm not sure? I mean, if he is. My boyfriend. It's been a while, for both of us, and things are weird, and—well, he hasn't been awake yet since I got here."

"They served together in the Vietnam War," Vanya explained helpfully, for Allison. "But that was three years ago for Klaus, and seven years ago for Dave. Time travel, you know?" Clearly, Diego had caught her up while Dave slept.

Allison stared at Vanya. "Klaus was in the Vietnam War? Three years ago? What?"

"No, last week," Vanya said. "But then he was in the early 1960s for three years after that." And then she started to laugh.

After a startled moment, Allison began laughing too.

And before he knew it, Dave was laughing along with them. A little hysterically, if he was going to be honest.

They didn't stop until Diego stumbled into the kitchen, rumpled and bleary-eyed.

"Sorry," Allison said, dropping back to a whisper completely pointlessly.

"No, it's okay, I was ready to get up," Diego said, rolling his neck. "Coffee?"

Vanya served out more coffee, and bagels with cream cheese—which Dave's stomach welcomed with an audible growl.

"I didn't think you'd come back so soon," Vanya said again to Allison, as they all stood around the kitchen trying not to drop too many crumbs on the floor. "Was Claire okay?"

Allison nodded, looking wistful. "She was. But apparently I don't have visitation rights in this timeline, either. Patrick let me look at her through a window—he took her to a restaurant, and let me know when I could walk by and see them." She drew herself up, and nodded. "It's okay, though. I was really happy to see her. And Patrick says that as long as I stay out of the state, I can talk to her once a week on the phone." She looked at Dave. "My powers don't work over phone lines," she said, as though that would be the one piece of the puzzle that he'd be missing.

"Oh," Dave said. "Ah, what's your power?"

Allison leaned back against the counter and tapped her fingers on its edge, looking uncomfortable. "Well, I say this phrase..."

"Mind control," Vanya interrupted. "Her power is mind control."

Dave took a big gulp of coffee to cover his reaction, which didn't help because then he started choking.

Allison, Vanya and Diego waited patiently for him to get himself under control.

"Okay," he said finally, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "That sounds ... useful."

"It's a terrible power," Allison said. "I could have everything I ever wanted, and none of it would be real. I went two years in the 1960s without using it, and they were the best years of my life." She obviously noticed how warily Dave was watching her. "I won't use it on you," she said. "I'm very seriously considering never using it again."

"Yeah, I kind of can't believe that _I'm_ the one whose powers Dad decided to suppress," Vanya said. "Couldn't you have used your powers on _him_?"

"I never tried," Allison said. "Too scared."

"Anyway, you did blow up the moon," Diego said to Vanya. "So there's that."

"You blow up _one moon_ ," Vanya said, "and your siblings never let you forget it."

Dave figured they were kidding, though he didn't really get the joke.

There was definitely still a moon.

But Diego was hugging Vanya, and she was kind of giggle-crying into his chest. And then Allison was hugging them both too.

"Hey, where _is_ Klaus?" Allison asked after a long moment, moving back out of the hug and wiping her eyes. "And Luther?"

"Yes, everybody is in my one-bedroom apartment," Vanya said. "Except Five, but he said he'd be back—"

Fizz-pop.

"Right on cue," Diego murmured, twirling a knife.

"Oh good," Five said, looking around. "Allison! I didn't expect you back already. Is Klaus conscious yet? And where's that detective lady? I told her to stay."

"She's at work," Diego said, sounding mildly dangerous. "Some people have jobs they need to show up for, you know."

"Eugh," Five said. " _Why_ is it so hard to get everyone to be where I want them to be? Never mind, we'll catch up with her later. Klaus and Luther are still here, at least?"

"In the bedroom," Vanya said, "but—"

"See you there," Five said, and lifting his fists, swish-popped away.

"It's ten feet away," Vanya said. "The door is open. He could have _walked_..."

Diego patted her shoulder. "We'll walk."

In the bedroom, Five was shaking Klaus's shoulder. "Wake _up_ , you idiot. It's time for a family meeting."

Klaus was responding with all the verve of a cooked noodle. Which is to say, not at all.

"Hey!" Dave shouted, sharply, and strode over to grab Five by the skinny wrist. "Don't. Eudora said we should let him wake up on his own."

Five glared up at him. Dave glared back. He had no trouble believing that this apparent kid was a grumpy and dangerous old man, but he wasn't going to let him endanger Klaus.

"Look at that," Diego sing-songed. "Klaus's boyfriend has _balls_."

"Five, be nice," Luther said. "He's still getting used to us. And he's worried about Klaus."

Five stepped back and cocked his head. "Goodness, Luther. Look at you, demonstrating leadership. Dad would be proud."

Although Five hadn't sounded _overtly_ sarcastic, the way the rest of the siblings bristled implied that the apparent praise had been a jab.

Then Allison said, "Five, how long has it been since you've slept?"

"Ah, how long has it been since we got here?"

"Going on four days," Diego supplied.

"About twice that long, then."

Dave assumed he was joking. Nobody could go that long without sleep.

"We'll meet right here," Luther said. "Klaus can sleep through it, or not. If he does—it won't exactly be the first family meeting he's spaced out of, will it?"

"Yeesh, all right," Five said.

"And then _you_ will have a nap on the couch," Allison said firmly.

Five glared. "You remember I'm old enough to be your father, right?"

Allison shrugged. "Old men need naps."

So they spread themselves out across Vanya's crowded bedroom. Luther stuck to his chair in the corner, keeping his bulk as much out of the way as possible. Diego leaned against the wall by the closet. Five paced. Vanya, Allison and Dave, by necessity, perched on the bed.

Vanya took Klaus's hand, Dave noticed, and held it, while watching Five.

"All right," Five said. "As you all know, our recent foray into the past altered the timeline to the extent that the Umbrella Academy no longer exists. By making inquiries and inferring my way across the gaps, I've determined that Dad did buy all of us, as per the original timeline, but then he passed us on to local foster homes and bought a _different_ set of children, to avoid—presumably—raising the six undesirable offspring he met in 1963."

Dave was already lost. He decided to stay quiet and hope to pick up some context as they went along—or to ask one of the nicer siblings for a better explanation later.

"Five different children, plus Ben," Luther said.

"Right," Five nodded. "He didn't meet Ben in the past, so he didn't hate him."

Vanya raised her hand. "But everything else is nearly the same! How can that be? I've got the same apartment. I've got the same _job_. I learned the violin because Dad gave me a violin to practice on while the rest of you were training for missions—how can that be, if I didn't grow up in the Academy?"

"I've got the same _daughter_ ," Allison pointed out. "I mean, I'm incredibly grateful. I would be devastated if she didn't exist in this timeline. But ... how is that possible?"

"It's possible because the butterfly effect is science fiction bullshit," Five said. "In practice, the timeline resists changes. The Commission's work depends on it; if every little change propagated outward wildly, they'd never be able to function—every mission would warp the entire timeline into something entirely new, and they'd have to spend all their time researching what the hell the current version of history looks like."

"But then why did the Commission care about, say, the Kennedy assassination?" Diego asked. "If the changes don't matter, why do they bother?"

"I didn't say that the timeline is unchangeable; just that it _resists_ change," Five said. "Certain peak events, like the JFK assassination, are so important that changing them _will_ overwrite everything that comes after."

"No, I still don't get it," Luther said. "We had one dinner with Dad, and now our entire history is gone."

"That's a small change in the grand scheme of things, not a big one," Five said. "The Sparrow Academy fulfills the same purpose in the world as the Umbrella Academy did. And that change happened because a person who'd had contact with the future—Dad—worked his ass off for it."

Vanya raised her free hand. With the other, she was gently rubbing Klaus's wrist with her thumb. "The world didn't end four days ago," she said. "That's a big change."

"True," Five said, hooking his fingers into his belt loops. "True."

Dave filed that away in his _definitely ask about later_ file.

"I wasn't part of the Umbrella Academy," Vanya said. "I didn't write a memoir. Leonard didn't read it. He didn't come into my life. He didn't trigger the apocalypse. That seems like a big change resulting from a small event—our dinner with Dad."

"Huh," Five said, looking at her. "That's true. Shit. Unless one of the Sparrow Academy kids is about to freak out and break the moon.... I'd better look into that." And he popped away.

" _Seriously_?" Allison said.

"I'm sure he's sleeping," Luther said, clearly aiming to be reassuring. "Somewhere. Somewhen. He still has a briefcase stashed away somewhere, remember. He could travel to the Stone Age, sleep, and come back."

And then Klaus gasped, and everything else stopped mattering.

"Klaus!" Dave yelped. He threw himself down beside him—he'd been sitting near the head of the bed, tracking Five's frenetic pacing around the room, but now he stretched out flat alongside Klaus and touched his cheek, trying to attract his attention.

Klaus blinked up at the ceiling like a kitten, and then turned and let his gaze fall on Dave.

"Oh," he let out a reedy gasp. "She fooled me again. This is Heaven. Okay." And he leaned forward just a fraction of an inch, but it was an invitation, and Dave eagerly accepted it. He kissed Klaus's soft, beloved lips. He closed his eyes. They could be back in his bunk in the A Shau, after lights-out, the secret everybody knew but nobody talked about.

Only it was bright morning and they were surrounded by Klaus's siblings. After long moments, Klaus broke off from the kiss and rolled flat onto his back again. Then his eyes traced around the room and he said, "Shit, you're all dead too? How did we fuck up? Was it Vanya again?"

"Hey," Vanya objected.

"We're not dead," Luther said, sounding uncomfortable and vaguely annoyed. " _You're_ not dead." And then he caught himself and added, in a friendlier tone, "I'm glad you're not dead. Welcome back, Klaus. You scared us."

"No, I'm sorry Luther, but we are definitely dead," Klaus said. "Trust me on this one." And then he groaned. "Only why does it _hurt_? Heaven isn't supposed to hurt."

Dave was pretty sure he understood the source of Klaus's confusion. "Klaus, _I'm_ not dead," he said. "You saved my life on Hill 689, this time around."

"Huh?" Allison said.

"You _died_ in Vietnam?" Diego said. "Sorry, man, you didn't say. My condolences."

"Oh," Luther said. "Maybe we should've told Five about _that_. In terms of timeline changes."

"He'll be back," Diego said. "We'll tell him then."

"How is this possible?" Klaus asked, tracking wide-eyed around the room again and settling back on Dave. "You're ... older. But not _sufficiently_ older. We're in Vanya's apartment."

"Lila brought him here from 1975," Diego said. "With a briefcase."

"When," Klaus frowned again, looking confused, "are we?"

"April 6th, 2019," Vanya answered. "We got back from the sixties four days ago. You've been unconscious for a while—we don't know how long."

"Oh, it was a long time," Klaus whispered. "Relatively speaking." He looked at Dave. "Why are you crying?"

There was no point in denying it; the tears were spilling out of Dave's eyes and spreading damp patches on Vanya's pillows. "You died," Dave admitted, his voice cracking. "On Hill 689. Protecting me."

He'd been hiding that fact from the Hargreeves siblings, not sure if it was important or dangerous. But after everything—Diego's joy at seeing Eudora alive, the increasing evidence that the Hargreeves weren't actually joking when they referred to the moon blowing up—it didn't seem like it would be a big deal to anyone but him and Klaus.

"What?!" Luther said.

"Oh my God," Allison said.

"Are you sure?" Vanya said.

"Je-sus," Diego said.

"In _this_ timeline?" Allison said. "How is that possible? What does that even mean?"

"I really died?" Klaus asked, looking at Dave with painful innocence. He seemed interested, rather than disturbed. "And stayed dead?"

Dave sniffled. His snot and tears were running into each other. He didn't care. He squeezed Klaus's hand. "I sat with your body all night," he said.

"Huh," Klaus said. "I wonder what that was like."

"It was horrible," Dave said, his breath catching.

"Oh sweetie, sweetie, I'm so sorry," Klaus said, patting Dave's cheek now. "You're so strong. I couldn't do it. I ran away as soon as you died. From Hill 689 straight back to the number 27 bus route. I only meant—I wonder what it was like to stay dead?"

"Don't," Dave choked out. " _Don't_ fucking talk like that, Klaus. I finally got you back, and, and, you were lying on that filthy mattress barely breathing, and I didn't know if you were ever going to wake up, and I could smell the blood and the mud again—" he cut himself off with a sob.

Klaus was crying too, his dark-rimmed eyes sparkling wet. "I know, I smell it too, only it was _you_ , and—I _see_ the dead, but I couldn't conjure you, not ever, and I tried so hard. I got clean for you, and I tried to save you, only it didn't work—"

"It _did_ ," Dave assured him, touching him. "I went to 'Nam, but when I met you there, you didn't remember that we'd met, but I did. I told you everything, and you believed me. Only I fucked up, I didn't tell you the hill I was going to die on until we got there, I thought it would be better if you didn't know—and then when we got there, I was so scared, and you _knew_ , and you changed things. You saved me, and you died." He didn't care how hard he was weeping. He pushed the words out—words he'd never thought he'd have a chance to say. "Afterwards I thought maybe you were my angel. Only I knew you were flesh and blood, and losing you hurt so much, I don't think I ever took another complete breath again until—" his breath whooshed out and in, filling his lungs, making sparkles appear in front of his tear-blurred eyes, "—now."

"Uh, do you think we should give them some privacy?" Luther said.

"Yes," Allison said, standing up abruptly from the bed. "Clearly, yes."

"Klaus, I'm glad you're okay," Vanya said, patting his hand as she stood. "We should talk later."

"Good to have you back, buddy," Diego called from across the room, before disappearing into the hall.


	5. Chapter 5

"This is real?" Klaus asked for about the tenth time. "I'm not high and hallucinating?"

"You're not hallucinating," Dave assured him again. He wasn't quite sure if Klaus just wanted to hear him repeat it, or if Klaus was actually forgetting in between. Klaus kept spacing out for long seconds at a time, eyes open but blank. It had scared Dave the first couple of times, but by now he'd stopped worrying about it. "You might still be high, on the other hand," Dave admitted, trailing kisses along his jaw. "We have no idea what you took. You've gotta stop doing that, Klaus."

"No promises," Klaus said. "I'm a fuck-up. But I'll try." And then, "You're really here? Alive?"

"I did the full tour in 'Nam and shipped home in '73," Dave said. Again. Telling the story was like kissing. They kept doing it and doing it, and it didn't get old. "Went back to work in my uncle's hardware store. I was in the back room alone in 1975 when a maniac with a machine gun burst in and tried to kill me for no reason that I could see. Lila saved me and brought me here. That was yesterday." He kissed Klaus again. "Your turn."

"I never died in Vietnam," Klaus started obediently. "I came back to 2019 and failed to prevent the apocalypse, along with my siblings. I got thrown back to 1960 and traveled the world and accidentally-on-purpose started a cult."

"And you came to see me in 1963," Dave said. "And I yelled at you, but you saved my life."

"No wonder you yelled at me," Klaus said with a sigh. "I was _really_ awkward about it. I thought Ben's eyes were going to roll right out of his head."

"Tell me about Ben," Dave said, easing up onto his side. He'd managed to figure out the basics—Ben was the last of the siblings, and he'd been particularly important to Klaus. And somehow, Ben was the only one of them who'd been affected by the reality overwrite—he was part of this mysterious Sparrow Academy now.

Klaus went quiet and blank. Dave thought they might be about to start again from the beginning—and that was okay, he'd do it as many times as Klaus needed to, counting his blessings every time—but then Klaus said, "My brother the ghost."

"Huh?" Dave said.

"He died when we were seventeen," Klaus said. "On a mission. But—I see ghosts, right? So he stayed with me."

"Oh," Dave said. He hadn't expected that. "Like, haunting you?"

"Technically, yes," Klaus said. "But actually he was my best friend. He wasn't like the other ghosts. He grew, he changed, he remembered things that happened after he died. He cared about me. He was also a fucking annoying Jiminy Cricket that wouldn't ever leave me alone, and he was paternalistic as all fuck." Klaus's jaw worked, and he sniffed. "I mean, I guess he saved my life a lot when I was living on the street. And he always acted all superior about it, too."

"You never mentioned him in Vietnam," Dave said.

"He wasn't there," Klaus explained. "Didn't make the trip with me. He did follow me to Dallas, though, so—who knows. Difference between traveling by briefcase and traveling by bespoke vortex, maybe."

"And when you got back to 2019, he was alive, so the ghost vanished?"

Klaus let out a little laugh. "Oh, that's a good question. What would have happened? God, would there have been two of him? But no. He—the last day in 1963, to get through to Vanya when she was about to accidentally trigger _another_ apocalypse, he sacrificed himself."

"Your ghost brother," Dave repeated, a little numbly, "sacrificed himself."

"Ghosts are people too," Klaus reminded him, with a loose finger to Dave's lips.

If Dave had been another person, a normal person, a person who hadn't spent his whole post-pubescent life hiding one of the most important truths about himself, a person who hadn't had a 10-month love affair in Vietnam with a time-traveling man who saw ghosts, he might've needed to spend a little time being skeptical about this latest revelation before he could think about what it meant. As it was, he leapt straight to the implications for Klaus. "So in the past five days, you lost me again, or so you thought—" the fight on the manor's grounds, which had taken on such different implications after Dave had loved and lost Klaus— "you lost your best friend who'd had your back pretty much constantly since you were 17, and then ... you tried to lose yourself."

Klaus closed his eyes. "My head hurts," he murmured. "I wanna sleep now."

"Okay," Dave said. He recognized the avoidance tactic for what it was, but that didn't mean that Klaus wasn't legitimately exhausted and in pain. "I'll be here when you wake up."

* * *

Dave lay with Klaus for the next few hours. Drinking in his beautiful form, his smell, his soft little sounds. Now that he knew without doubt that Klaus was happy to see him again, it didn't seem creepy to kiss his temple while he slept.

When Klaus had first woken up and seen Dave, he'd concluded that he was in Heaven. Dave was pretty sympathetic to that notion, right about now. To have Klaus again—in a soft, clean, queen-sized bed, no less, in a room with a door that closed, and the apparent blessings of Klaus's big, weird family—with no Hill 689 looming over them—it was so much more than Dave had ever, _ever_ dreamed of.

It wasn't really Heaven, though, not quite. Well, Dave had never believed in Heaven except as a metaphor, but as a metaphor he thought of it as a state of unending, _uncomplicated_ happiness. And his situation here, while thoroughly joyful, was definitely complicated.

He'd been ripped from his own time. He had no job, no references, no ID.

And Klaus, well. Klaus's siblings had repeatedly asked Dave 'how well do you know my brother?' and there'd always been a clear implication of dark truths they thought Dave was missing. And Dave had again and again insisted that he knew Klaus better than they thought. For sure, he was aware—had always been aware, since early in 'Nam—of some of the darker truths. The ghosts, the drugs. Klaus's instability, his damaged sense of self.

But Dave was willing to concede now, in the privacy of his own skull, that there were clearly a lot of things that he didn't know about Klaus. Practical things. What did he _really_ know about Klaus's life outside of the self-contained pressure cooker of army life?

Dave settled down beside Klaus with an arm slung protectively over him, and tried to take stock.

Start with the most practical. Where could they go from here? What did their tomorrow look like?

Klaus was homeless. This was his sister's bed. It was a one-bedroom apartment; she'd be wanting her bedroom back, probably sooner rather than later.

Klaus had been homeless since he was ... 17? 20? He'd lived as a hustler, drifting from one man's bed to another and sleeping on the streets in between. Klaus had flaunted that fact like a badge in 'Nam in response to the slightest jabs about his effeminate gestures. _No matter what you accuse me of, I've done so much worse._

Twenty-three-year-old Dave had found the whole notion romantic—but then back in 'Nam, any life lived outside of the jungle had sounded like a fairy tale.

Thirty-year-old Dave had been volunteering at VFW for a couple of years, serving soup once a week to homeless vets, so he knew better now. People ended up on the street because they were fucked up, and the streets fucked them up even more.

Just like in 'Nam, Dave was going to have to be the stable one. This might be Klaus's time, but he was still going to need Dave to help him navigate it.

Okay, what else had Dave learned about Klaus? Six siblings. Adopted. Five of them in Klaus's orbit now, one at the Sparrow Academy with his memories re-written by a timeline change.

They'd grown up in the Umbrella Academy, which sounded like a boarding school, but they'd been raised by a man they called 'Dad.' Who Klaus had never referred to in Dave's presence without cursing or scowling or taking a drink or curling up in on himself.

They time traveled, but not frequently or entirely voluntarily.

They had powers. They'd trained in combat. They'd gone on missions, as teenagers. One of them had died.

Dave supposed that went a good long way to explaining how Klaus had managed to handle himself so competently in 'Nam after getting dropped in the thick of things without the benefit of basic training.

Beside Dave on the bed, Klaus sighed a little and shifted position, but didn't wake up.

It had to be close to noon; Dave was hungry again. And as much he wanted to say that he'd be happy to just lie next to Klaus for the rest of his life and revel in the miracle of their reunion, Dave needed to pee. And he was starting to feel a little restless. Ten years in the army hadn't left him with an inclination to lie around doing nothing for too long at a time.

Dave kissed Klaus's neck one more time for good measure, and then eased himself off the bed. If he left the door open, he was pretty sure he'd notice quickly when Klaus woke up. The apartment wasn't all that big.

Anyway, it could be useful to spend a little more time getting to know the siblings.

* * *

Nobody was in the kitchen; Vanya and Allison were sitting together in the living room, talking quietly with teacups between them.

"Hi David," Vanya said, looking up. "Is Klaus awake?"

Dave shook his head. "Call me Dave," he added. "Everyone does."

"Diego and Luther went to the gym," Allison said. "They said they'd come back tonight after Diego's done cleaning."

"Diego ... cleans a gym?" Dave asked, trying to put together pieces.

Vanya nodded. "He works there in exchange for the room in the back. Luther's been staying with him, since we got back to 2019. If Luther has an apartment in this timeline, he hasn't found it yet."

"He's probably got one on the moon," Allison mentioned. "But that's not very helpful."

"Huh. People live on the moon now?" That was about the most futuristic thing that Dave had heard since he got here.

But Allison was shaking her head. "Not people. Just Luther." She patted the empty spot beside herself on the couch. "How about you join us? We were just chatting. We have a lot of catching up to do."

"Not as much as _I_ do," Dave said, accepting the invitation.

"Don't be so sure," Allison said with a wry look. "We had a weird childhood. And we've barely seen each other as adults."

"But, you were all just in the '60s together?"

"We were in the '60s _separately_ ," Allison said. "Five's vortex dropped us all off in the same place, but at different times. We didn't find each other until a few days ago. Subjectively speaking."

"Tell me more about Ray," Vanya prompted, looking at Allison.

So, over the course of an extended conversation which eventually moved to the kitchen so they could eat cold meat sandwiches, Dave finally learned what all the Hargreeves siblings had been doing in the 1960s—at least, what was known by Allison and Vanya.

That nuclear Armageddon had been so narrowly averted didn't shock him as much as they seemed to think that it would. The world had been living on a knife's edge for almost as long as he could remember. That's what Vietnam had been _about_.

That they'd both found love in the '60s, and then had to leave their partners behind, was a bittersweet revelation.

That Vanya's love had been a woman—well, she'd already mentioned that to him. And the fact that Allison spoke of that relationship, Dave's affair with Klaus, and her own legal marriage to a man in the same tone of voice went a long way towards reassuring Dave that Diego had been right—some things were dramatically better now.

"Do you think you might ever be reunited?" Dave asked them. "If somebody could bring them forward, like me?"

Allison shook her head. "I looked Ray up. He married again, lived a long happy life. Had three kids. He wrote a few books, and I look forward to reading them in, let's say, five to ten years, when I feel ready. He died in 2013."

"I haven't tried that yet," Vanya said. "I'm not sure what my chances are of finding Sissy—she'll have changed her name. I'd like the reassurance of knowing that she ended up happy, but I'm a little afraid of what I might find. The path she was on wasn't easy."

"Neither was Ray's," Allison reminded her. "But it turned out okay."

Vanya gave a sad little shrug and nod.

"What about you?" Allison asked, turning to Dave. "I'd love to hear more of your story. How did you and Klaus meet? What on earth made you fall for _him_?"

"Okay, you've all got to stop acting like it's unbelievable that somebody could love your brother," Dave said.

"But it's _Klaus_ ," Allison said, waving her hand. Sounding exactly like Dave's little sister at her most flippant, come to think of it.

"No, Dave's right," Vanya said quietly. "We all have these ... reflexes. Of contempt and resentment towards each other. We have to work on that."

Allison nodded, growing serious, and touched her throat. "Sorry," she said. "You're right, of course."

Vanya looked back at Dave. "But, it _is_ Klaus. He's kind of a mess. Maybe not more so than the rest of us when you dig deep, but he's ... _flamboyantly_ broken. And you seem so normal."

Dave let out a sharp laugh. "I never felt normal. Ever since I was a kid, I knew there was something deeply wrong with me. Something I had to hide. Klaus was the first—practically the _only_ —person I ever met who didn't make me feel dirty and wrong for wanting to kiss a man. Being with him, for the first time in my life I felt _whole_. Even though we were in the middle of a fucked-up pointless war, even though I thought I was counting down every day towards my own death, when we were together I felt like I was walking on air."

Vanya was nodding slowly. "Okay. I think I get that. More than I ever could have before I lived in the '60s and met Sissy." She brushed the crumbs off her fingers, and started collecting everyone's plates to stack them next to the sink. "But now that you're here, you know, it's safe to be open about who you are. With Klaus or not. I mean—even if you decide not to stay with Klaus. We'll help you out."

A quick denial was on the tip of Dave's tongue—he wanted to declare that Klaus was the miraculously-resurrected love of his life, and it was _inconceivable_ that Dave wouldn't want to stay with him. But he held himself back, and considered his response more thoughtfully.

Vanya didn't seem like an annoyed and resentful sibling reflexively bad-mouthing her brother, this time. She seemed like a calm, empathetic woman, concerned that Dave wasn't seeing the situation clearly.

"I know it's not going to be easy," Dave admitted. "I know that Klaus has a lot of problems, and—it might be worse here than it was in 'Nam. There were only so many drugs he could get there."

"It might go _better_ than we're all thinking," Allison suggested. "When I met up with him in 1963, he'd been clean for three years. He was managing the ghosts somehow. He had that whole advance-guard Flower Children cult, and drugs weren't even a part of their culture. I don't know why he started drinking again, but—"

"Are you talking about _me_?" lilted a familiar, beloved voice. Klaus flounced into the kitchen, hanging onto the door frame for balance while he made the turn. He was wearing a flowery satin bathrobe, hanging open, and nothing else.

"Oh my God, Klaus," Allison said, putting her hand over her eyes, "do up your belt."

Dave did his best to suppress the stupid grin that was blooming on his face. He went over to Klaus, tugged the robe shut, and started tying the belt for him. "We're not in the barracks here, ghost-boy," he muttered, avoiding eye contact so that he could manage to sound stern. "This is your sister's kitchen."

"And you're still heeere," Klaus murmured, his voice rising to nearly a squeak by the end. "This is—I really don't know what I did to deserve this. Probably it's an accounting error." He patted at Dave's face, somewhere halfway between an affectionate gesture and a fumble.

"How are you feeling, Klaus?" Vanya asked politely.

"Wonderful!" he said, and shifted his grip from the door frame to Dave's shoulder. Then he sagged against Dave. "No, that's a lie," he said. "I really, really want to say that I feel wonderful, because you're here and this is the most amazing, fantastic thing that's ever happened to me, but _everything_ hurts and my head is about to split open."

"Maybe you shouldn't be up yet—" Dave started to suggest, when Klaus pushed suddenly away from him, stumbled across the kitchen to the sink, and hunched over the basin, gagging.

Dave went after him and started rubbing his back in gentle circles. Not like it was the first time they'd found themselves in this position, anyway.

Nothing was coming up; it was just dry heaves.

"Rough night?" Allison asked wryly.

"You could say that," Vanya said, showing worry-lines on her forehead. "Diego brought him here in case I had to raise him from the dead."

"Oh, that would be so redundant," Klaus murmured into the sink, panting.

" _What_?" Allison said. "How much did he drink? Dave, were you _with_ him?"

So apparently nobody had caught Allison up yet on the Klaus-related events of last night. "No, I wasn't," Dave said, and then Vanya gave Allison the rundown while Dave controlled Klaus's impending collapse to the kitchen floor.

"Oh my God," Allison said when Vanya was done. "When he slept through Five's meeting, I assumed he was just hung over." She crouched down in front of Klaus—Dave had him sitting with his back propped against the kitchen counters—and reached out to caress his cheek. "Klaus, baby," she said in a softer-than-usual voice, "What did you take? And when?"

"Ummm, it took half a day to find a dick I could suck for money," Klaus said. He winced, and looked apologetically at Dave. "Sorry, sweetie. Didn't mean to cheat on you—I assumed we were splitsies, on account of you being mad at me and dead. Then I had to find a dealer, so ... I guess it was the next day by then?"

"Wednesday," Vanya deduced.

"And what did you take?" Allison pressed him.

"Oh, oxy," Klaus said, closing his eyes with a faint smile. "So much oxy."

Dave didn't know what that was, but Allison frowned and nodded. She turned to Vanya. "If the OD hasn't already killed him, it's not going to," she said. "But I think he's dehydrated."

Dave felt stupid. He'd done first-aid training; he should have thought of that. He stood up right away and found a glass, filled it with water.

"Little sips," Allison cautioned. "And then wait a minute before you give him more. You don't want him to puke again."

"I know," Dave said, and knelt in front of Klaus. "You heard the woman, honey. Sip, sip, and I'm taking it away."

Klaus obediently sipped. "Mmm, that's pretty good," he murmured, lolling his head back against the cabinet.

"Okay, let's not leave him on my kitchen floor," Vanya said.

Dave nodded. "I've got this." Setting the glass aside, he scooped Klaus up from the floor and cradle-carried him to the living room, to set him on the couch. Klaus laughed at the manhandling, and begged a kiss upon being deposited, but then curled up with a whimper.

"It really hurts," he groaned.

Allison crooked a finger at Dave and grabbed Vanya by the arm. "Quick family meeting," she said, drawing them both back to the kitchen.

"You, me, and ... Dave?" Vanya asked, sounding a little befuddled.

"It's what we've currently got." Allison swept back her hair from her forehead, and puffed out a things-are-getting-real-here sigh. "Vanya, Klaus nearly died."

Vanya nodded. "I know, I was here last night."

"No, I mean—Klaus was passed out for two days in some crack house. His body temperature was dropping, and night was falling. None of us was looking for him. _He wasn't going to wake up._ If his magical time-traveling boyfriend from the Vietnam War hadn't popped up out of nowhere and asked about him, he would have died."

"You were in California," Vanya said, defensively. "You left practically the moment we got back."

"I'm not trying to play a blame game," Allison said. "I ignored him. You ignored him. Five ignored him. Luther and Diego ignored him. Dave showed up, and we got lucky. I'm just saying—if we don't want to lose another brother, I think we're going to have to play closer attention to Klaus for a while."

"Okay, yes. We did kind of go over this last night, Allison, without you. None of us had thought about what it meant that he'd lost Ben. We should have."

There was a prickly moment between the sisters, but then Allison made a little gesture that pulled Vanya into a hug. "I didn't mean to criticize you," Allison said, pressing her cheek against her sister's. "It's all so—for the past two years, I thought I wouldn't ever see any of you again. And I'd been avoiding you all for my entire adult _life_ , so I told myself it didn't matter anyway. But then when I saw that man in jail with Klaus's stupid hand tattoos, and tracked Klaus down in his friggin' mansion, I was so _happy_ to see him."

"I know," Vanya said. "I think we have to start being a family. It's hard, but we need it."

Dave raised his hand, to get their attention. "Well, I intend to stick to Klaus like glue," he assured them. "But ... I don't know exactly where we're going to go. Since I just came from 1975 with nothing, and he left his mansion in 1963."

"Oh, you can stay with me," Vanya said instantly. "Of course. For as long as you need to."

Dave had really hoped she'd say that. He'd been fishing for it, honestly. He felt bad imposing, but there was literally nowhere else they could go until he figured out how to get money in 2019.

How to get money in 2019 _without_ letting Klaus start hustling again, to be more specific.

"And as soon as I get a place locally, you'll be welcome there too," Allison said. "I'll make sure to get something with a few guest rooms."

Vanya looked at her with somewhat milder surprise than Dave felt. "You're moving back for good?" she asked.

"For now," Allison said. "I think the farther I am from Claire, the safer Patrick feels letting me talk to her. And, well ... that's fair. I could go to Europe, but I'd rather stay closer to you all, now that we're finally, you know. Talking to each other again."

"Allison is a movie star," Vanya mentioned to Dave. "I don't think we mentioned that earlier. She's got a lot of money."

* * *

After that, Dave sat with Klaus and rationed his sips of water. Allison went out, and came back a few minutes later with 'oral rehydration fluid' from a pharmacy, which promised optimal electrolyte recovery. Afterwards she left again, saying she was going to check into a hotel, but that she'd be back in the evening when they were expecting Luther and Diego.

Between rehydrating sips, Dave and Klaus played 'do you remember.'

"Do you remember when Bingo got his head stuck between the bars in the grill at that strip club in Saigon?" Klaus asked.

"God, yes," Dave laughed. "They had to coat him with the oil the dancers used, to get him loose. Do you remember when your boot lace broke, and you lost your boot in that mud hole, and the whole squad went mud-diving trying to get it out for you so we could get back to base before dark?"

"Eight gorgeous men rolling around in the mud for little old me," Klaus grinned. "I'll never forget it. Do you remember when you caught me the second night, reading the manual in secret, and you taught me how to field strip a rifle and put it back together so I wouldn't get reamed out at inspection the next day?"

Dave shook his head. "In my version, I showed you on the first night. I already knew you never did the training, since you'd time-traveled to the A Shau by accident. I was really impressed at how fast you picked it up, by the way."

"In my version," Klaus said, "I never told you I was from the future."

"This is fascinating," Vanya said sincerely. She was listening to them from the chair, sitting tucked up with her arms wrapped around her knees. "You're remembering two different timelines, but all the little details are nearly identical."

"Everything except for the direct results of me seeing Klaus first in 1963," Dave nodded. "It is a little weird, isn't it."

"I tried to make a big change. I tried to convince you not to join the army at all," Klaus said. "Instead you joined two days earlier."

"But ended up in the same unit, and still met you," Dave said. "Does that mean it was fate?"

Klaus shrugged. "What's fate?" he asked the ceiling.

"Hey, do you still have my dog tags?" Dave asked. "The ones you showed me in 1963?"

Klaus clapped his hand to his chest with a look of shock. "They're gone," he said, almost wheezing. "Some fucker must've stolen them while I was OD'd—"

"Shh, shh, it's okay," Dave said, putting his hand over Klaus's, since Klaus seemed to be freaking out disproportionately to the loss. "It doesn't matter. I was just curious if my serial number was different in your version. It should be, if I joined on a different day."

"They were all I had left of you," Klaus wailed, curling in on himself.

"It's okay, it's okay," Dave crooned, wrapping his arms around Klaus and rocking him. "I'm here. I'm here."

"I'll just give you some privacy," Vanya said in an undertone, and left the room.

Klaus wept. And Dave held him, and thought about how it was a pretty strange situation to be in, comforting his lover over his own superseded death.

Finally Klaus quieted again, snuffling.

"Are you okay?" Dave asked.

"You're right," Klaus said. "The dog tags don't matter anymore."

"I'm alive," Dave said. "That doesn't take away the fact that you had to grieve me for three years. I understand. I had to grieve you, too. I'm so happy to see you, but the pain of missing you hasn't all gone away."

"When did you get so _wise_?" Klaus asked, kissing him. "You sexy, sexy man."

"But _are_ you okay?" Dave asked, pulling away from the kiss. "Because I think you tried to kill yourself three days ago."

"Oh, shit, no, no no no no, sweetie," Klaus murmured, looking up at him with big wide eyes. "I didn't, no. Don't worry about that. I wouldn't, ever, now that you're back."

"You took too many drugs, and you would have died if we hadn't found you," Dave said softly. Not accusing Klaus, just stating the facts. "I know that you've been using since you were a teenager. You must have a pretty good idea of how much is too much."

"Well, I forgot to account for how I'd been clean for three years," Klaus said. "Changes a guy's tolerance. And Ben wasn't there to talk sense into me. I mean, yes, I fucked up. But I won't do it again."

"Okay," Dave said. "And how are the ghosts?"

Klaus shuddered a little, but then smiled his beaming, everything-is-fine-don't-worry-about-it smile at Dave. "Vanya's apartment is pretty quiet," Klaus said. "It was rent-controlled. The tenant before her lived here for fifty-two years. She died peacefully in bed. She's still here, but she's nice. She always has a cat or two around her—I'm not sure if the cats are legit ghosts, or just props. I don't usually see animal ghosts." He paused for a moment, focusing on an empty corner of the room. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," he said to the corner. Then, back to Dave, "Turns out the cats ate her. Only after she'd been dead for a while, though, so it's not like it _hurt_ her. Anyway, she's the only ghost."

"You have to tell me," Dave said. "Okay? About the ghosts. Whether they're bothering you or not. Just like in the barracks. I don't want you to have to carry them alone anymore."

"Got it," Klaus said, snuggling his head down against Dave's chest. "Full ghostie disclosure."

Dave checked the glass of rehydration fluid—there was less than an ounce left at the bottom. "Here," he said, picking it up, "you should finish this."

Klaus did so, wrinkling his nose.

"How's the headache?" Dave asked.

"Better," Klaus said. "But I still feel like I was recently tied to a chair and tortured by assassins."

"That's what you said three minutes into our first conversation," Dave recalled.

"Well in that case it was literally true," Klaus clarified. "Today it's just a metaphor. Or was that a simile?"

"Do you want to go back to bed?" Dave asked.

"With you?" Klaus said, putting on a sunny grin. "Always."

* * *

Five was on the bed. Fast asleep, sprawled starfish-style on top of the covers.

Dave and Klaus backed out of the room. "So much for my plan to get laid," Klaus murmured. And then stumbled sideways into the wall.

"Back to the couch," Dave said, steadying him.

Vanya shot them a questioning look as they passed her in the kitchen.

"Occupied," Dave said, thumbing back towards the bedroom.

Vanya frowned, and went to investigate.

Dave lay Klaus down on the couch, and tucked an afghan over him. "Get some more sleep," he said. "I'll still be here when you wake up."


	6. Chapter 6

Klaus and Five both slept for the rest of the day. Dave helped Vanya wash the dishes, and then they chatted quietly. She was interested in hearing more about Klaus in Vietnam—she seemed to find the idea of her brother as a soldier very strange.

For Dave, it was strange to see him _out_ of that context. When he expressed that he was deeply looking forward to getting to know Klaus afresh in civilian life, Vanya made that cautious, doubtful little noise again. 

Dave decided not to worry about it. He knew why he loved Klaus. The siblings would just have to get used to it.

Anyway, as for the Vietnam stories, he kept them light. The kind of stories you told outsiders, or the ones for Saturday afternoons at the VFW when everyone's sticking to one beer and going home to their families afterwards.

* * *

Allison arrived near sundown, with heaps and heaps of take-out food. Luther and Diego showed up just a few minutes later, with Eudora in tow. Vanya went to wake up Five, and Dave woke up Klaus.

Since there was no table in Vanya's apartment that could seat eight people, they just pushed all of Vanya's living room furniture to the sides of the room and sat on the floor, in a big circle around the food.

"Okay," Five said as they started passing around plates, "as far as I can tell, the Sparrow Academy isn't going to trigger an apocalypse."

"Well, that's good news!" Allison said brightly.

"I didn't say there isn't going to _be_ one," Five warned her. "There are still a hell of a lot of unanswered questions and loose ends."

"Five," said Luther, "Do you have some _reason_ to believe that there will be another apocalypse?"

"Strictly speaking, no," Five said. "But there's always been one before."

The siblings all looked at Vanya. "I'm feeling _fine_ ," she said. "Living with amnesia for a month was very ... healing. Ironically. And getting drugged and questioned under torture by the FBI really helped me to pull all the pieces together."

"Sorry, _what_?" Eudora interjected.

Dave had already heard this story from Vanya and Allison in the afternoon, so while Vanya unpacked that statement a little for Eudora, Dave was free to make sure that Klaus actually took some food from the dishes that were being passed around.

"I'm not hungry," Klaus murmured sullenly as Dave loaded his plate.

"Yes you are," Dave assured him. "You just don't know it yet."

In fact Klaus was looking reassuringly healthy, all things considered. He didn't have that strung-out, beat-up, half-starved look that he'd had when he'd first landed in the A Shau. Thinking through what he'd learned in the past day about Klaus's personal timeline, Dave figured that Klaus had just had three good years, followed by one bad week.

While the pre-dinner furniture shifting had been in progress, Klaus had slipped back into his black jeans from yesterday—freshly laundered, thanks to Vanya. Now he was sitting cross-legged, still wearing Vanya's flowery satin bathrobe open as a shirt. It was still strange for Dave to see Klaus in anything but fatigues, but man he really pulled off that look with the robe.

"What worries me," Five said, when Vanya got to the end of her FBI anecdote, "is the shifting ground."

"Meaning what?" Dave asked, thinking of mud slides he'd been in.

"Everything I ever knew about the timeline said that there was nothing past April 1st, 2019. Nothing but desolation and quiet. The Commission nudged things this way and that all through history, but it was axiomatic that last Monday was the end of everything. And yet," he waved his hands, "here we are."

"Which is _great_ ," Luther said. "It's exactly what you traveled through the vortex for. It's what _Dad_ wanted so badly that he killed himself to bring us all together."

Huh? Dave shot a questioning look at Klaus, who rolled his eyes and made an unconcerned floppy gesture with his hand.

"It just feels ... unstable," Five said. "I've never traveled back and forth along my own timeline like this before. I don't understand how all the paradoxes are resolving. The timeline resists changes, yet as Vanya cleverly pointed out yesterday, our dinner with Dad in 1963 led to literally _everything_ changing in the here-and-now."

"No, hardly anything changed," Allison said. "Remember? I've still got Claire. Vanya's got her position at the symphony."

"Seven billion people aren't dead today," Five said snippishly. "That's a big change."

"And again," Luther said, "that's great. Why aren't you relaxing and enjoying it?"

"Because I don't _trust_ it," Five snapped. "Why that one change, and no others? Vanya still lives alone in this sad little apartment and plays the violin, but she doesn't blow up the moon. _Why_?"

Everyone was quiet for a moment, and then Klaus said, "Maybe God willed it."

Five rolled his eyes. "And does anybody have a suggestion that _isn't_ facile and empty-headed?"

"No, I'm serious," Klaus said. Which surprised Dave, because Klaus had always been such an in-your-face agnostic in Vietnam. "Somebody is clearly pulling some strings. I think it's God."

"That is not a useful or testable hypothesis," Five scowled. "Try to remember you're not a cult leader anymore, all right?"

"Sorry, I forgot to tell you," Klaus said. "God exists. I've met her. She doesn't seem to like me very much. She keeps booting me out of the afterlife."

"Klaus," Luther said, sounding annoyed, "We don't have time for—"

But Five was talking over him, staring at Klaus intently. "No, hold on, this is new information. Tell me more."

"There's not much to tell," Klaus said with a shrug. "I've died three times." Then he caught himself and added in an aside to Dave, "I'm not counting Vietnam. Since I don't remember that one."

"Klaus?" Dave said in an undertone, threading his fingers through Klaus's and squeezing. He wanted to follow up with a _what the hell are you talking about?_ and a _holy fuck, please tell me you're joking_ , but Five was already snapping his fingers to draw Klaus's attention back and saying, "Details."

"Oh, uh, let's see," Klaus said. He lifted his free hand and squinted at it, to count on his fingers. The other hand squeezed Dave back. "First time, was just after I got back from Vietnam. When I followed Luther to the club. I got knocked down, cracked my skull. Second time was in India. I drowned. Coming back from that one really cemented my position with the cult, let me tell you. Oh, I guess chronologically that was first, though? Since it was 1962. But the first thing God said when she saw me was 'Seriously? You again?' so I assume she was tracking along in the same order that I was. Third time was when I OD'd on Wednesday." He winced, and looked at Dave. "Sorry. I didn't want to worry you. But I took a _lot_ of oxy."

Five sighed. "So you're accident-prone. We already knew that. A few near-death hallucinations do not constitute proof of divinity."

"I was not _near_ death," Klaus said, drawing himself up in ostentatious outrage. "I was underwater for _three hours_ in Varanasi. You can ask Ben." And then he deflated again. "Oh, never mind. No you can't."

"I believe him," Diego said.

"Me too," Allison agreed, looking troubled.

"Okay, okay, I'll play along," Five said. "Tell me about the afterlife, Klaus."

Klaus hunched his shoulders in. "I already said, there's not much to tell. I'm on a country road. Dirt. God's a little girl, and she rides up on a bicycle. Different girl every time, but the same bicycle. The first time she sent me to talk to Dad, the second time she just rolled her eyes and said 'wrong time, wrong place' and resurrected me, and this time she said, 'ugh, not yet,' and told me I was going to have to walk home." He frowned. "I walked along the road for _days_. Then I collapsed, and slept for a while, and I woke up here."

"But did she say anything _useful_?" Five asked. "The meaning of life? The master plan? The trick to making a perfect cup of coffee?"

Klaus looked thoughtful. "Um, she said that she made people. And she had favorites. And I wasn't one of them."

Five bit into a pork bun, scowling. "Okay, so unless everybody thinks we should kill Klaus and ask him to interrogate God and get back to us—"

— which was met by a reassuring chorus of 'No!' and 'What?!' and 'Don't say things like that, Five, it's mean' from the other siblings—

"—that's no help at all," Five finished. "Even if that really was God that Klaus has been meeting up with, that doesn't explain anything."

"Maybe we stop worrying about the 'why,' and concentrate for a while on the 'what,'" Allison suggested. "I'm thinking that we all need to stay away from the Sparrow Academy, find out what's true about our lives now, and regroup. Spend some time getting to know each other better, even."

"Oh, _that_ sounds fun," said the bitter old man in the body of a 13-year-old.

"What's wrong with getting to know us better, Five?" Klaus asked, blinking innocently and leaning against Dave.

"Seriously, you tied time and space in knots to save us from the apocalypse, man," Diego said. "Might as well relax and enjoy our company now that you've succeeded."

"You're my family," Five bit out. "I love you, okay. But you're all so _young_ and _annoying_."

"Actually," Klaus said, lifting a hand high for emphasis, "the rest of us are older than you in person-years."

Five's eyes narrowed. "What did you think we were measuring in? Dog years? I'm 58, Klaus."

"Not in person years, you aren't," Klaus said. "Think like combat hours. Person years are years you've spent with people. And you are _way_ younger than the rest of us."

"He has a point," Allison said, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm the oldest, by the way," Klaus added. "Allison's second. Hey, we should re-number ourselves! I'll be one, Allison's two..."

"Klaus, stop being stupid," Luther grumbled.

"You just don't like being demoted to second-last," Klaus said. And he looked at the others. "Well, he is, right? All those years on the moon."

"I don't think we should re-number ourselves," Allison said, looking around. "That would be—" she wrinkled her nose, "weird. But Klaus is right, that we all need to think about offering some support to Five. _And_ to Luther, for that matter. They have the least experience of living normal lives."

"You think I need to learn life lessons from a homeless junkie hustler?" Five asked, looking extremely skeptical.

"Hey, I have great people skills," Klaus said. "I just don't waste them on my siblings."

"Okay, let's just say we all have areas of expertise and areas of deficit," Allison clarified. "And we can all help each other."

"Hey," Vanya said, frowning thoughtfully. "Do we even _have_ numbers? In this timeline? If we weren't raised by Dad..."

Diego put down the spare rib he'd been gnawing on, like he'd just forgotten about it mid bite. "Je-sus," he said. "You're right. Only—if we were raised by strangers, how do we even have the same names? Mom didn't name us until we were fourteen."

"Sorry, _what_?" Eudora interjected.

"Oh, papa Hargreeves loved children so much, he gave us numbers instead of names," Five said. "One—" pointing at Luther, "Two, Three, Four—" Diego, Allison, Klaus, "Five—" himself, "Seven," Vanya.

"Ben was Six," Klaus murmured, and leaned into Dave with a sad sigh.

"That is—I'm sorry, but that's messed up," Eudora said.

The Hargreeves variously nodded and looked glum.

"The timeline resists changes," Five reminded them. "Whatever families raised you must have given you the same names Mom did, by not-actually-random coincidence." Then he looked mildly perturbed. "Huh. In this timeline, do _I_ have a real name?"

"In this timeline, do we have real _families_?" Allison asked, looking even more perturbed. "People who raised us, who loved us, who'll be expecting us to call them on their birthdays and show up at Christmas?"

"Vanya," Five said, rounding on her. "You've been living in your own apartment since you got back. Found any mementos? Family photos?"

Vanya shook her head. "Nothing. Everything's almost exactly the same as I remember it, except—obviously, my book doesn't exist."

"Well, that's one upside," Luther said.

"Vanya wrote a tell-all memoir about our growing-up years," Klaus glossed for Dave's benefit. "It wasn't very flattering."

"Sorry," Vanya muttered, gazing down into her fried rice.

"I didn't say it wasn't _accurate_ ," Klaus added.

"Actually, it's too bad there isn't a version of it in this timeline," Allison said. "We could read it to figure out what's the same and what's different. I mean, in this timeline were we even raised together? Did we even _know_ each other?"

"Diego knew Klaus," Eudora piped up.

Diego groaned and hid his face in his hands.

"They weren't brothers," Eudora said. "But they did know each other."

"Could we just ... _not_?" Diego moaned into his palms.

"Well, now I'm curious," Five said.

"Me too," Luther added.

"They crossed paths growing up in the foster care system," Eudora said. "And they did some time together in juvie."

Diego lowered his hands. "Oh," he said. And then, "Juvie? Seriously?"

Eudora gave an awkward smile. "This is weird," she said. "It's _your_ life story. And you were always so reluctant to talk about it. You only told me about Klaus because—well, you needed my help rescuing him, sometimes."

"Oh," Klaus said, popping up with a delighted look. "Alternate-timeline Diego was looking out for me? That's so sweet."

"It's not my life story," Diego said. "It's some other guy's."

Eudora looked troubled, and drew subtly away from Diego. "In that case, who are you? And what happened to him?"

"No, it's okay, Klaus and I have already been over this," Dave assured her. Finally, he felt like he had some relevant information to contribute. "We remember each other from different timelines, but we're still _us_."

Klaus responded to this statement by pulling Dave in for a deep, garlicky kiss. Dave stiffened for a moment with a reflexive, panicky, _not in front of people!_ reaction, but then remembered the unwavering acceptance he'd found from the Hargreeves so far. So he threaded his fingers through Klaus's soft curly hair and kissed him back with gusto, heart racing.

When some of the siblings eventually started making soft gagging noises and moaning 'Get a _room_ , you guys,' Dave broke it off. Klaus whimpered a little, giving him bedroom eyes, but didn't persist.

"You can have my room tonight," Vanya promised, flashing them a quick shy smile followed by a frown. "But you have to do the laundry tomorrow."

"Fair," Klaus said. "You're the best, little sis."

"But actually," Luther said, "What _did_ happen to the Diego that Eudora knew? And the Vanya who lived in this apartment?"

Diego gave Luther a weird look. "We're them. We just remember things differently."

Luther shook his head. "If there was no April 1st apocalypse, then we didn't jump back in time to avoid it. So when we came back here, we should've met us. Like Five did, in 1963."

"Not me," Klaus said. "I died in Vietnam. Apparently." The words were flippant, but he gave Dave a quick little sideways hug. Dave only felt unsteady for a moment. It didn't matter how many times Klaus had technically died—what mattered was that he was here, now.

"Okay, that explains Klaus," Luther said. "What about the rest of us? Did we all disappear mysteriously too?"

"I don't think so," Eudora said. "I mean, Diego was fine when I saw him on Monday."

Diego got very still for a moment, and then, casting a quickly wary look around the circle, turned full on towards Eudora and said, "Are we ... i-in th-TH-this timeline, a-a-a-a-are we still ... d-Dih-did we e-eh-ehver...?" He gave up, pressing the heels of his hands to his cheeks in a quick frustrated gesture, and then spun to his feet and fled to the edge of the room to press his forehead against the wall.

Eudora shot him a look of sympathetic concern, and half-rose to follow him before apparently thinking better of it and staying in her place. "We dated," she said gently. "Is that what you're trying to ask? In the Police Academy. And we broke up, years ago. I love you as a friend, but you are a _mess_ as a boyfriend. I'm sorry. Was it different, in your timeline?"

Diego rolled his body around so his back was to the wall, and he sighed. "No," he said. "Exactly the same."

"Look, I don't think we should waste too much energy worrying about our other selves," Five said. "Obviously we don't have doubles here, or else Vanya would've kicked herself out of the apartment by now. Rule of thumb at the Commission was, try to avoid meeting your past self on account of the psychosis, but don't sweat the paradoxes—they always resolve themselves somehow."

"God chooses," Klaus suggested.

"Sure," Five agreed with a subtle eye roll. "That's as good a theory as any."

Allison scraped the last bits from a serving container of mixed vegetables onto her plate, and said, "So, it's agreed, then? We'll all stay away from the Sparrow Academy, take some time to get to know each other as adults without an immediately impending apocalypse, and figure out where do we go from here?"

She said it like it was a consensus that they'd all come to together, rather than a suggestion that she'd raised earlier and that everybody else had largely ignored. But a cautious nodding and murmur of assent passed around the siblings.

"I've already offered Klaus and Dave my bed for the night," Vanya said. "I'll sleep on the couch. I don't have room to make anybody else comfortable, I'm afraid."

"I took a two-bedroom suite at the Hilton," Allison said. "Five can stay with me. Luther, there's also a sofa bed, if you'd rather stay with me than Diego."

"I was sleeping on Diego's floor," Luther said with a wince. "So that would be nice."

"Good then," Allison said. "We can meet back here tomorrow morning, if that's okay with Vanya."

"Sure," Vanya said. She looked a little overwhelmed, actually. "That would be ... great."

"Family meeting concluded?" Klaus asked brightly. "That's our cue, then." He leapt to his feet, and pulled Dave up by the hand. "Vanya, do you have any condoms?"

"Not that I know of," Vanya said. "I've had a quiet life."

"I've got you covered, Klaus," Allison said with a smirk. "Look in the bag from the pharmacy."

"You're the best!" Klaus declared, and kissed her on the top of the head.

* * *

Dave would have waited until they got into the bedroom to start undressing, but Klaus started tugging at the buttons of Dave's shirt while they were still tumbling down the hallway together. Dave decided not to object, despite several of the siblings still having a sight line to them.

"Oh, you're gorgeous!" Klaus crooned in delight a moment later, pushing Dave down onto Vanya's bed with the door shut safely behind them. And then he was licking Dave's nipples, and Dave was whimpering.

Every part of their bodies needed to be explored and admired, but Dave found himself drawn again and again to the center of Klaus's chest, finding it reassuringly intact every time. Klaus had the same fascination with Dave's sternum, likely for the same reason.

Kisses everywhere. Smelling, licking, nibbling. Dave knew he was in danger of coming from the foreplay alone, and he wanted more than that, so he murmured his wishes in Klaus's ear.

"Just a second," Klaus said, and fumbled for Allison's pharmacy bag.

"Do we really need a rubber?" Dave asked, perplexed at the interruption. "I don't have VD, I promise."

Klaus pushed Dave down on his back again, and started unrolling the condom over Dave's erect shaft. "Right, 1975," he murmured. "Oh, sweetie. You don't even know about AIDS yet."

Dave blinked his confusion. "What aids?"

"Don't worry," Klaus said, squirting a dab of a clear gel into his hand. "Ben always nagged me to wear a condom. And use clean needles."

"Um?" Dave said, not following the conversational thread at all. And a moment later he stopped caring—Klaus lowered himself onto Dave's cock, and laughed in delight, face to the ceiling.

"Thank you," Klaus said to the ceiling. "I know you don't like me, I don't know why you gave me this, but thank you anyway."

If that was a prayer, it was an unorthodox one. But Dave hoped that Klaus's bicycle-riding, little-girl God was willing to grant them many, many more nights like this.


	7. Chapter 7

Dave and Klaus were the last ones to arrive in Vanya's kitchen in the morning. Dave had heard the other siblings arriving, but the first three times he tried to wake Klaus up, Klaus just smushed his face into Dave's chest and mumbled incoherently and fell back asleep.

Even in the A Shau Valley, Klaus hadn't been a morning person. Here and now, Dave figured he could indulge him.

A bit.

Eventually—time number four—Dave decided to wake Klaus up by giving him a hand job. Which absolutely worked, but delayed their breakfast by another twenty minutes.

So when they finally emerged into the kitchen to face the siblings, Klaus was floating loose and happy by Dave's side, with a giggle on his lips. Dressed once again in his black jeans and Vanya's robe, since that was literally all he had. Dave was back in his blue-checked shirt and khakis. They really needed to get some new clothes, somehow, today.

"Good morning," Vanya said, and the rest of the siblings echoed it. Most of them were suppressing grins, and it was really clear that they were all assuming that Klaus had got laid and that they were happy for him.

This was so much more acceptance than Dave had ever dreamed of in his life. He was startled to find happy tears blurring his eyes.

"Did you sleep well?" Luther asked politely. Diego snickered.

" _So_ well," Klaus said.

"Coffee?" Vanya asked.

"Oh my little-girl-on-a-bicycle, yes, please," Klaus said.

"Thanks, that would be great," Dave agreed.

"So, what was W. E. B. Du Bois really like?" Allison asked Five, apparently in a continuation of a conversation they'd been having before Dave and Klaus had walked in.

"Sorry," Vanya interrupted, "I have to grind more beans. This'll be loud." She turned on her coffee grinder, which immediately drowned out any attempt at ongoing conversation.

A couple of seconds later, Dave noticed that Klaus had gone utterly still, and was staring hollow-eyed at nothing. Breathing fast and shallow.

"Honey?" Dave said softly, close by Klaus's ear. "You okay?"

No response.

Dave took a quick step across the small kitchen and tapped Vanya's arm. "Stop, stop," he said, waving at the grinder.

She released the button and silence fell.

"What did you—" she started to ask, but Dave was already back at Klaus's side.

Klaus was still a hollow-eyed absence, but this time when Dave touched his shoulder he shuddered and blinked and took a shaky breath, and then focused on Dave. "Sorry, did you say something?" he asked lightly.

"Not particularly," Dave said. "Let's go wait in the living room while Vanya finishes grinding the coffee, okay?"

"Ah, sure," Klaus agreed, looking around like he wasn't quite sure where he was.

Dave took his hand and led him out to Vanya's couch, and sat him down.

The coffee grinder started up again, this time greatly muffled by the distance and the fact that it was around a corner. Klaus didn't flinch.

"Just now," Dave said to him softly, "were you back in the A Shau?"

Klaus gave him a look of pure dismay. "How did you know?"

"I've seen it before," Dave said. "That thousand-yard stare. Does it happen a lot?"

"No, no, it's not a big deal," Klaus said. "Just, sometimes with loud noises."

"Are you talking about PTSD?" Allison said, startling Dave. She'd followed them into the living room, but he'd been too focused on Klaus to notice. She took a seat in the armchair, close corner-wise to the couch, and leaned in, looking intently at them.

"I don't know what that is—" Dave said, but simultaneously Klaus gave a loose combination nod and shrug.

"Technically, sure, I guess so," Klaus said.

"The A Shau," Allison said, "that's in Vietnam?"

"The A Shau Valley," Dave confirmed. "It's where Klaus and I served together."

"Here," Vanya said, stepping around the corner from the kitchen with a coffee mug in each hand, "I've got your—"

"Bring the guys," Allison interrupted her. "We're having a family meeting. About Klaus."

"Um, okay," Vanya said, vanishing back around the corner.

"What?" Klaus yelped. "No, no no no Allison, there's nothing to talk about."

"What aren't we talking about?" Luther asked, coming into the room. Vanya, Diego and Five followed him in.

"Klaus's PTSD from Vietnam," Allison said.

"I still don't know what you mean by that," Dave said.

"Post-traumatic stress disorder," Allison expanded. "Maybe you didn't call it that yet in 1975?" Looking around at the others, she added, "He just had a flashback."

"Oh no," Vanya said, eyes widening. "I'm so sorry, Klaus, I didn't realize." She cast an awkward look down at the mugs in her hands. "Um, do you still want...?"

Klaus leapt off the couch to pluck one of the mugs away from her. "Yes, yes yes," he said, and cupped it in two hands to drink deeply. Meanwhile, he started backing away towards the apartment's door. "Anyway, it's been a slice. Dave, sweetie, how 'bout we check out the town?"

"Nope," Allison said, reaching out and catching the trailing end of Klaus's bathrobe. "We're doing this now. Klaus, back on the couch. Everybody else, get a chair."

Klaus made a distressed face, but let himself be pulled back to the couch. Dave put an arm over his shoulders. Luther and Vanya obediently pulled extra chairs from other parts of the room and arranged them on the opposite side of the coffee table. Five gratuitously teleported four feet and ended up perched on the arm of the couch, looming over Klaus. Diego settled leaning against the wall next to the fireplace—behind Luther and Vanya—and pulled out a knife to twirl one-handed.

"This is really reeeeeally not necessary," Klaus said with a little moan.

"We have a long history in this family of ignoring each others' pain," Allison said. "I want us to do better. Because that's the kind of poor sibling relationship that gets the moon blown up."

Klaus winced. "I seriously doubt I have the power to blow up the moon."

"I'm not actually worried about that," Allison clarified. "I was just using it as a metaphor."

"It's not a metaphor," Five said. "I lived in the apocalypse for 45 years."

"And that," Allison said, "is _also_ something we should talk about. When you're ready. But right now, we're dealing with Klaus."

"So, you had a flashback?" Vanya asked Klaus, leaning in. "Are you okay now?" She'd set Dave's mug on the coffee table; it sat there cooling, untouched. For the moment, Dave felt like he might need both hands free to hold Klaus together.

Klaus's posture was managing to convey a paradoxical combination of about-to-shatter brittleness and careless insouciance. "It's really nothing to worry about," Klaus said. "Whyyyyy are you all looking at me."

"Is it because of Dave being here?" Luther asked. "Bringing back the memories?"

"What?" Klaus said. "No." He turned directly to Dave and repeated, "No, no, no," touching Dave's cheek with a quick flutter of fingertips. "This is a _miracle_ ," he said. "It's 100% good. The flashbacks are just a reflex. Like Pavlov's dog drooling at the dinner bell."

"Have you been having them for very long?" Vanya asked.

Klaus let out a soft, despairing laugh. "That's such a complicated question. Because time travel."

"Relative to your own timeline, doofus," Five said, poking Klaus's knee with his Oxford-clad toe.

"Oh, well." Klaus blinked. "Since I got back, then."

Luther frowned, still looking confused. "Back to the future, or..."

"Back from Vietnam," Diego contributed from the wall. "That's what he's trying to say."

"So it's been happening for three years," Allison clarified. "The whole time you were in the early '60s."

"That must've been tough to explain to your cult," Luther mused. "Since the war hadn't happened yet."

"I didn't have to explain _shit_ to the cult," Klaus said. He flopped back against the couch cushions. "I set up expectations of erratic behavior early on. After that, I could pretty much do anything and they'd still eat out of the palms of my hands. It was very relaxing."

"Okay, let's not go down the rabbit hole of your cult-management techniques," Allison said. "What triggers the flashbacks? How distressing are they?"

"Not as distressing as this conversation," Klaus moaned. He set the coffee cup down so that he could cover his face with his hands and curl his knees up to his chin. "Everybody stoooooop looking at me."

"Klaus, you're _always_ trying to make yourself the center of attention," Luther said, sounding honestly puzzled.

"Yes, and you guys always ignore me," Klaus said into his hands. "We have a groove."

"Loud noises," Dave said to the siblings. "His trigger. He said, a minute ago. Loud noises."

"Like this?" Five suggested, and before anyone could react, clapped his hands next to Klaus's ear.

Klaus flinched and glared at Five, but didn't drop into that vacant-eyed stare.

"Hey," Allison snapped, "Behave, Five."

"Yeah, don't be an asshole," Diego said, suggestively pausing his knife-spinning for a moment with the blade pointing in their direction.

Five shrugged. "Just trying to get an idea of his limits. If I'm going to have him at my back in a combat situation any time soon—"

"Which you're _not_ —" Allison interrupted—

"You can't know that," Five retorted.

"Fuck, it's not like it's happening _constantly_ ," Klaus said. "Just with sustained loud noises. Sometimes."

"The coffee grinder," Vanya realized. "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Or a paint mixer, rave music, a moped driving by with no muffler—I mean, Bangkok was rough," Klaus admitted. "But I can _handle_ it, guys."

"See, now the reason I'm worried that that isn't true," Allison said, "is because you killed yourself four days ago."

"That doesn't matter," Klaus said. "It didn't stick."

"It matters because you did it," Allison said. "As soon as you didn't have Ben watching out for you."

"Well, and the cult," Klaus said. "They were a bit much sometimes, but they were sweet. And they were always there." He smiled. "And now I've got Dave! So move along, everything's fine."

"Ah," Dave said, "I'm not sure you're fine." Putting it mildly.

"Do you think we could get him into therapy?" Vanya asked—addressing her siblings, mostly. "Some kind of ... veterans' support group, maybe?"

"The time travel angle is a little awkward," Allison said.

"Yeah, the guys at the VFW don't take it so well when a 30-year-old wanders in drunkenly claiming to be a Vietnam vet," Diego said.

"That sounded oddly specific and non-hypothetical," Five observed. "I assume this happened _before_ I misplaced you all in the early '60s?"

Allison glared at Diego. "You knew all along? And didn't say anything to the rest of us?"

Diego held up his hands in a quick surrender—knife tucked between the fingers of his right hand. "Hey, there was a _lot_ going on. We were trying to stop the apocalypse. Assassins were hunting us. Eudora had just been killed."

Most of the siblings looked surprised at that last bit. "Eudora who was here last night?" Vanya asked, for all of them.

Diego scowled. "Hazel and Cha-Cha killed her." The knife started spinning in his hand again.

Five looked interested. "When?"

"When they were looking for you," Diego said.

Allison put her hands to her head and squeezed her hair. "See, this? This is exactly what I'm talking about. We need to become the kind of family where you _tell_ your siblings when your best friend is murdered by time-traveling assassins. Diego, I'm so sorry that happened."

Diego shrugged. "It's all better now."

"Lot of that going around," Five muttered, casting a quick suspicious look straight at Dave.

"But we're still talking about Klaus," Allison reminded them. "And his PTSD from the frikkin' Vietnam War."

"Allison," Klaus said in a soft croon, reaching out to lay a hand on her knee, "I appreciate what you're trying to do here. It's sweet. But I was a hot mess waaaaay before I landed in the A Shau. Thank dear old Dad and his passion for experiential learning. A few extra little flashbacks are just the sprinkles on top, that's all."

"Okay," Allison said, taking his hand before he could withdraw it, "let's talk about that. How are you doing with the ghosts?"

"You stayed sober for three years," Luther mentioned hopefully. "You must've found a way to deal with them."

"Oh, uh, sort of," Klaus said. "I have more power over them now? Like Dad always wanted. I can compel them, a little. It helps if they're willing, instead of fighting me. And I can give them the power to interact with the physical world a little." He looked up—not quite at Diego, but a little to his left, in front of the fireplace. "Yes, for instance, like that," he said. "Go for it, Bernice." He smiled at the rest of them. "She's been wanting to get in there this whole time."

"Huh?" Allison said.

"Hey!" Diego yelped, leaping to the side.

Inside the fireplace, there was the sound of brick sliding against brick. And then a single brick dislodged itself from the fireplace's grimy back wall and dropped to the bottom, sending up a puff of dust.

Vanya and Luther had both craned around in their chairs to get a good look. "Huh," Luther said.

Diego ducked down and peered in. "There's something in there," he said, reaching. A moment later, he pulled out a thick, sooty envelope. He opened it up and looked inside. "Oh my God," he said, "it's money."

"Well don't blame me," Klaus said to the air. "You're the one who showed them where it was. What did you think _you_ were going to do with it? You're a ghost." Then with a squawk of dismay, he suddenly turned into a flurry of limbs scrambling up over the back of the couch. Dave was too startled to react before Klaus had already landed on the floor behind the couch with a thump.

"What's happening?" Luther was asking, rising to his feet.

"What are you doing, Klaus?" Five was saying, peering down behind the couch.

"Oh my God, he's choking," Allison said, scrambling out of her chair.

Dave flew around the couch—it seemed faster than going over—and found Klaus lying on his back on the floor, hands up near his neck as though he were grabbing at something invisible. Struggling.

And two thumb-shaped indentations had appeared in the flesh of his throat.

"The ghost is strangling him!" Dave yelled in a panic. "What do we do?"

"They can't do that," Vanya protested, coming up behind him. "He was always scared of them, but they could never touch him."

Dave slashed at the air where the ghost should be, based on Klaus's position. His hands just whooshed through with no resistance—though he thought he felt a slight tingle of cold. A moment later Allison did the same thing from the other side, equally unsuccessfully.

Klaus's heels thumped on the floor, and he gurgled.

The whites of Vanya's eyes suddenly went ... whiter. She thrust her hands out and Dave felt himself pushed backwards five feet by an unseen force. He flailed to keep his balance. On the floor, Klaus's clothes fluttered but his struggles didn't abate.

Vanya's eyes went back to normal and she seemed to shrink a little. "No help," she said. "Sorry."

Allison made a panicky, fluttering gesture with her hands, and dropped to her knees next to Klaus. "I heard a rumor," she said into the air, as though praying, "that you let Klaus go."

Dave wasn't sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but it didn't seem to have any effect.

"Uh, I've got nothing," Luther said, shrugging his giant shoulders.

"We could offer to give the money back," Diego suggested, still over by the fireplace.

"Yes!" Dave yelled desperately. "Yes, do that!"

"Catch," Diego said, and tossed the envelope in Dave's direction.

From the unstable, stuffed look of the open envelope, Dave expected bills to go fluttering in every direction. Instead, the envelope flew at Dave like a dart and settled smack in his outstretched hand.

Right. Diego could throw things.

"Here!" Dave said, waving the envelope through the air where he thought that the ghost was. "Take it back! We don't want it."

For a long despairing moment he thought it hadn't worked—and then Klaus was coughing and wheezing, and curling himself up into a sitting position.

"Klaus honey, be okay, be okay, please be okay..." The words just tumbled out of Dave's mouth. He was on his knees next to Klaus, touching his back, wanting to hug him but afraid to interfere with his breathing.

"Is it gone?" Vanya asked, looking around with a wary air.

"She's gone," Klaus rasped.

"What happened?" Luther asked. "Ghosts could never touch you before."

"Downside of lending them more power," Klaus said. "But the _up_ side is, I've learned how to consciously dismiss them. Only it takes a little concentration, so..." he shrugged. "Thanks for distracting her."

Vanya picked up the envelope from where Dave had dropped it on the floor. "Should we put this back in the fireplace, then?"

"I think there's something like five hundred bucks in there," Diego said.

Klaus's eyes went wide, and he snatched for the envelope. Vanya was already on her feet, though, and she kept it away from him.

"No, no, absolutely do not put it back," Klaus said. "What if you decide to build a fire? It's a federal crime to destroy money, you know."

"I don't want an angry ghost in my apartment," Vanya said, quite reasonably.

"The money was her anchor," Klaus said. "Put it back, you're stuck with her. Give it to me to safely dispose of, and the apartment stays ghost-free!"

"If you give it to Klaus," Diego warned, "he'll probably drink it. Or shoot it up his arms."

"Hey!" Klaus said.

"I think we should give it to Dave," Allison said. "He just got here from 1975 with nothing."

None of the siblings objected; Vanya nodded, and handed the envelope over to Dave. "Welcome to the family," she said with a little amused smile. "Let's call this Klaus's dowry."

"Uh, wow," Dave said. "Are you sure you don't want to split it? That's a lot of money."

"Not as much as you're probably thinking," Allison warned him. "A cup of coffee costs five bucks now."

"Oh," Dave blinked. "Well anyway ... I was thinking that Klaus and I both need to get a few changes of clothes.

Klaus beamed at him. "Let's go shopping!"


	8. Chapter 8

"So what do you think of my family?" Klaus asked in a lilting voice, hop-skipping along the sidewalk.

Dave took a moment to marvel at Klaus's resilience.

Half an hour ago, he'd been shaking and lost in his memories of the A Shau.

Ten minutes ago, he'd nearly been strangled to death by a ghost.

Now he was moving through the world like it was a dance. Touching a little bit of everything—the wrought-iron peaks of the fence they were passing, the scrawny trees growing up through the holes in the sidewalk, the hoods of parked cars.

And he was getting wet. It was drizzling rain.

"Come back under the umbrella," Dave said. They'd borrowed it from Vanya. And Klaus had had to borrow shoes from Diego—he'd been barefoot when they'd found him in the boarded-up house.

"Okay," Klaus said, and stepped in close enough to link his elbow through Dave's. Raindrops glistened in his hair, and on his eyelashes. He kissed Dave's cheek. "Brushes with death make me a little manic sometimes," he mentioned.

"I remember," Dave said.

"And they make you quiet," Klaus added. 

Dave thought about it. "True," he admitted.

"So?" Klaus asked. "First impressions of the Hargreeves clan?" His voice was still a little hoarse from the strangling.

"Your siblings seem very nice," Dave said politely.

Klaus threw his head back and laughed.

"They do," Dave insisted. "They're ... intense, though. And I'm not used to feeling like I'm the _normal_ one in a room."

"Extraordinary is the new normal," Klaus said. "Anyway, you fit right in. You're a time traveler now, remember."

"I don't have any superpowers," Dave said.

Even though Klaus's siblings' powers hadn't really _helped_ in the fight with the ghost, it had still been quite unsettling to see their powers in action. Dave knew he was completely outclassed.

"Oh but you do, sweetie," Klaus said. "You have the power to make me hard just by looking at me!"

Dave stifled his laugh into a discreet cough. "So where are we going?" he asked. "I don't know this city at all."

"I think I remember a second-hand shop just a few blocks away," Klaus said. "We can outfit ourselves there and still have enough money left over for fun."

"Klaus," Dave said with a sudden feeling of caution, "were you telling your sister the truth about the ghost? That the way to get rid of her is by _spending_ the money, not putting it back?"

"Weeeeeeell," Klaus hedged.

Dave stopped in his tracks. "We are _not_ saddling your sister with a vengeful ghost."

Klaus pshawed. "Ghosts are helpless. Except around me."

" _We_ are planning to sleep there tonight," Dave pointed out. "I really don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and find you strangled to death beside me."

"The money _was_ the anchor," Klaus assured him. "But it doesn't matter what we do with it, really. When I dismissed Bernice, I felt her pass all the way to the other side. She won't be back no matter what we do."

"Okay." Satisfied that Klaus was telling the truth, Dave started walking again. He was chilly in his shirtsleeves—it couldn't be more than 50 degrees. Klaus was wearing the light black trench coat that he'd had on when they'd found him, but since he was wearing it open with no shirt underneath it, he couldn't be any warmer than Dave was. He had visible goosebumps.

They really needed to get some seasonally-appropriate clothes.

"What does it mean?" Dave asked after a moment. "When a ghost passes to the 'other side'?"

"It means they don't come back," Klaus said. "That's all I know."

"Have you ever asked the ghosts about it?" Dave asked curiously.

"Ghosts don't know shit about the afterlife," Klaus said. "Even Ben had no idea what came next."

"What about ... what you saw, when you say you ... died?" It was a weird thing to ask about.

Although it wasn't hard to think of Klaus as someone who'd come back from the dead, given that Dave seen him die, mourned him for seven years, and was now walking beside him in a light spring rain.

"The long dirt road? Oh, I don't know," Klaus said. "I didn't see any ghosts there. Except Dad, that one time."

They walked silently for a few seconds.

"This is really a lot to process," Dave admitted.

"Are you okay?" Klaus asked, sounding a little worried. "I mean, it was one thing, being together in Vietnam. But now you're here with all the weird shit that my life brings."

"There is nowhere that I'd rather be," Dave promised him. And then, proving it, he stopped to give Klaus a kiss, full on the lips. In the middle of the sidewalk. With people passing in both directions.

People moved aside to avoid bumping into them, but nobody said a thing.

"Wow," Dave said, coming up for air. "The future really is the promised land, huh?"

Just then a car slowed down next to them. A window rolled down, and a twenty-something man with a blond buzz cut yelled an obscenity and drove away.

Klaus lifted his middle finger to the back of the car, and kept it held high until the car was out of sight.

"Or, not so much, huh," Dave sighed.

"Don't worry," Klaus said, putting a hand on his wrist and drawing him onward. "The chances we get gay-bashed by somebody who can take the two of _us_ in a fight is vanishingly low. And if we get into trouble we can't handle, I'll call my brothers for backup." He laughed. "And if we _really_ can't handle it, I'll call my sisters."

* * *

They finally reached the shop, and got themselves some clothes. Klaus delighted in modeling item after item for Dave. He also enjoyed finding things _for_ Dave. Dave was a little nervous at first, given Klaus's very edgy fashion sense, but Klaus had a good eye for what would fit, and he surprised Dave by only suggesting stuff that Dave would feel comfortable in.

They wore one set of the new outfits right out of the store. Dave was in blue jeans and a soft green shirt, with a beat-up brown leather bomber jacket to keep him warm against the ongoing chill rain. He'd managed to find boots that fit, too—beige leather work boots with thick rubber soles.

Klaus was wearing a woman's black-and-white checked knee-length wool coat with a long jewel-blue scarf and red crushed velvet trousers. And shiny black high-heeled boots. He looked fucking amazing.

"We still have nearly four hundred dollars, and the day is young!" Klaus crowed happily.

Somehow, in the process of changing their clothes and paying for their purchases, Klaus had ended up with the money envelope. Dave was laden down with the bags containing the rest of their purchases and their original clothes, as well as the umbrella.

"We should go back to Vanya's, at least to drop this stuff off," Dave said.

Klaus danced a few steps away from him, and then back again. "Tell me I shouldn't go buy drugs with this," he said, flashing the money envelope.

Dave wrinkled his nose, wondering if there was going to be a problem, here. "You shouldn't buy drugs with that," he said agreeably. "It's all the money we have. We should buy groceries to share with Vanya."

"Right." Klaus nodded, tucked the money in his pocket, and fell into step with Dave under the umbrella.

After a few more moments, Klaus said, "Tell me you'll leave me if I get high again."

"What?" Dave stared at him. "I absolutely will not leave you."

"Aaaaagh, you said it wrong." Klaus tucked his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders, striding along glumly. In the heels, he was a little taller than Dave. "You don't understand, sweetie. I'm really, really a fuck-up. I started drinking when I was thirteen. On to opiates at eighteen. I did it to make the ghosts stay away, but—even if I can sort of handle that on my own now, I've never been sober in this city as an adult. I don't know how."

"You just managed for three years," Dave reminded him.

"That was then and this is noooooow," Klaus moaned. "The sixties were like a weird pastel dream. Now I'm back home in this grimy city and I'm on a first-name basis with seventeen different dealers. I got clean _for_ you and I don't want to fuck up this amazing second chance we've got, but my skin is crawling and there's a traffic-accident ghost glaring at me just over there, and you have to give me an ultimatum, sweetie. Just tell me that I absolutely can't, and I won't."

"No," Dave said. "We tried that, remember? It didn't work."

In Vietnam, there'd been a cycle. Every time they got leave in the city, Klaus would get trashed. Practically all the guys would, actually, so Klaus hadn't really stood out at first. But every time they got back to camp, it was a little worse. Klaus started getting high _at_ camp. In retrospect, Dave was pretty sure that what had been going on was that Klaus had been getting better at scoring drugs in Saigon—making contacts, learning the right words.

Dave hadn't been put off by the drug use, not exactly. Dave's delicate good-Texas-boy sensibilities hadn't lasted long in-country; he'd shed them long before the night Klaus popped out of thin air in his tent. And Dave loved drunk Klaus and high Klaus just as much as sober Klaus; in every incarnation, Klaus was sweet and sexy and amazing.

But Klaus's addictions were dangerous. It had all come to a head about four months in, when Klaus had collapsed three-quarters of the way into a six mile forced march through the jungle. The guys had had to take turns carrying him in the humid 105 degree heat.

After they survived that experience, Dave decided it was his job to fix Klaus. And so he issued the ultimatum: go ahead and drink on leave, but sober up before you get back to camp. And no more drugs. Or we're done.

Klaus, shaken by his near-death experience and obviously believing that Dave was serious, had agreed to the terms.

And then broken them four hours into their next leave.

Dave, raised by stern men to be a man of his word, had broken up with Klaus. Even though he felt his heart shattering.

And that had lasted one miserable week.

Dave hadn't imagined that the teeming tropical jungle of Vietnam could turn so washed-out and gray. That the sounds of too-near explosions could thud so dully and seem so unimportant.

Klaus had been utterly miserable too, and against Dave's expectations he'd been _quiet_ about it. Shut down. No complaints, no teasing boundary-pushing flirting, nothing. Klaus was the first one into his bunk at night, the last one up in the morning, avoiding everyone, skipping mess. And getting high, quietly, daily, because apparently he'd managed to build up quite a secret stash.

It had affected the squad. The fact was, they all breathed and ate and shat and marched and dug and waited for sudden chaos and death together, and the pall over Dave and Klaus fucked everybody up. Two different guys had come to Dave in private on two separate nights and said, "You've got to make things right with Klaus or the whole squad is FUBAR." Which was impressive considering that the whole squad also understood, right down to their bones, that the Thing between Dave and Klaus could never be mentioned out loud.

So at the one week mark, Dave had pulled Klaus behind the latrines, said "Never mind," and kissed him.

After that, they'd worked out an understanding. Klaus would be a little more careful about when he got high. Dave would remind him to be, and Klaus would allow himself to be reminded.

And the squad understood that once in a while, they'd just have to carry Klaus out of the jungle.

Having seen the alternative, everybody accepted that this was just how things were with Klaus. In exchange, he was their good-luck charm. He made sure they never got lost in the jungle, or came upon a sniper nest unawares. (Dave knew that Klaus managed this by asking the ghosts of dead G.I.s for directions. Klaus didn't hide that fact, but the rest of the guys thought it was a loopy metaphor.)

Anyway—point was, they'd tried the ultimatum thing once, and it had been a disaster.

"Do you _want_ me to stay sober?" Klaus moaned, back in the 2019-present. "I've got an envelope full of cash and no self-control, Dave."

"Of course I want you to stay sober," Dave said mildly, not breaking his stride as Klaus dramatically flopped against his shoulder. "But I don't want you to do it because you're afraid I'll leave you. I want you to do it because you don't want to leave _me_."

"Leave _you_?" Klaus repeated, in a tone of baffled incredulity. "You're the only man I've ever truly loved. I would never, ever leave you."

Dave took a deep breath but kept his stride steady. Wished for a free hand to put around Klaus's shoulder. Thought about the wild ride of the past two days, about the times he'd nearly lost Klaus in the A Shau and the time he had. "You might not mean to," he said finally. "But what if your bicycle girl gets tired of booting you back home?"

"Ooooh," Klaus said. A few seconds' pause. "I see your point."

"Good," Dave said. "So how about you put the envelope of cash into _my_ coat pocket."

"Okay," Klaus said, and did so. "But you know I could pick your pocket in two seconds flat," he added.

"I've got an idea to prevent that," Dave said, stopping. "Hold out your hands."

Klaus stopped too, and with a quizzical look, opened his hands gracefully towards Dave. _Hello_ and _Goodbye_ , upside down from where Dave stood.

Dave distributed the shopping bags between Klaus's two hands.

The corners of Klaus's mouth sank, and so did his shoulders. "But these are heaaavy," he moaned.

Dave snorted. "I've seen you walk all day through the jungle carrying 60 pounds of gear."

"I complained there too," Klaus pointed out.

"True," Dave admitted. He rolled his own shoulders, happy to have handed the load off. The bags weren't all that heavy, but he'd been awkwardly asymmetrical what with the umbrella.

It wasn't much farther to Vanya's apartment. Klaus slouched along, schlepping the bags; Dave held the umbrella so that it covered Klaus properly, and got drip-drip-drips on his own neck in consequence.

Klaus was alive, and with Dave.

Dave's heart thudded with joy.

* * *

They got pizza for lunch after dropping the bags off. They ate at a hole-in-the wall place near Vanya's, with one little table and a counter in front of the window. They sat on stools side-by-side at the counter, watching the rain stream down the window and the wet people scurrying by outside.

"Pizza's different," Dave observed, around a mouthful of slice. "More toppings." Chipotle barbecue chicken seemed like a strange thing to put on a pizza, but it was delicious.

"Is there anything you think you're going to miss about the past?" Klaus asked, picking at his own slice with his fingers and pulling off a tiny piece of cheese. His mood had been subdued since they'd arrived at the pizza place.

"My sister," Dave said without hesitation. And that was a sad thought. But they'd been drifting apart for years. Well, she'd got married and had kids while he was in Vietnam. And after he'd got back, Dave had found it hard to talk to people who hadn't been there.

"You could look her up," Klaus said. "She might still be alive."

"She'd be old," Dave said.

"Five is old," Klaus replied.

"He doesn't look it."

That got a laugh from Klaus. "He really doesn't."

"Apart from her ... honestly, no," Dave said. "No close friends."

"What about the other guys from the 173rd?" Klaus asked. "Did they make it out?"

"Sam and Knuckles died the same night as you," Dave said. "That was the most in the shit we ever got. The others you knew shipped home eventually—earlier than me. I wasn't a draftee, remember, I'd signed up career. I didn't get out until the evacuation of Saigon." It felt longer than two years ago. It _was_ longer than two years ago. Most of the people passing by on the sidewalk in front of him wouldn't even have been born yet. "I looked up a few of the guys when I got back stateside, but they're scattered across the country. The closest to me was Billy, in New Orleans. We got together for the 4th of July last year. We drank to you, by the way."

"Billy," Klaus said softly. "He had the weirdest laugh." He pushed his pizza away. "Sam and Knuckles, shit." Bracing his elbows on the counter, Klaus smothered his face with his hands and let out a quick, muffled sob.

"Fuck," Dave said. "Sorry. I didn't think about ... what it would be like to hear it."

Klaus kept his pose, shoulders hunched and shaking with his carefully silent weeping. Dave, after a moment, stood up and went to grab some napkins. Came back to Klaus.

It took a few minutes, but Klaus settled. Looked at Dave with shining-wet, red-rimmed eyes. "Okay," he said. "I'm okay."

Dave handed him the napkins, and Klaus dabbed at his eyes and then blew his nose.

"No I'm not," Klaus decided. "Let's go get shitfaced. For Sam and Knuckles."

"Nope," Dave said. "That's not going to help."

"Yes it wiiiillll," Klaus said, switching on a dime from bare grief to wheedling.

"I'm not going to pin you down and stop you," Dave said. "But I'm asking you not to."

"Oh, fuck, why do you have to be so understanding and mature about it?" Klaus groaned. "Now I'm going to look like a total dick if I go and do it anyway."

"We could go back to Vanya's place," Dave suggested. "Maybe it would help you to have some of your siblings around, too."

"It never has before," Klaus muttered, and dropped his head into his hands again. "Fuuuuuuuuck," he moaned. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuckitty fuck fuck fuck. Fucking ... fuck."

"What is it, honey?" Dave asked softly, resting a hand on Klaus's back, because it really kind of seemed like the swearing was going somewhere, except it wasn't.

"I'm fucking afraid that I'm a better maudlin war story than I am a boyfriend," Klaus said into his hands. "And you're going to hate me when you realize that right now I'm thinking that I can use Sam and Knuckles as an excuse to get high."

"I don't hate you," Dave said. "And I think that the fact that you told me that means you're doing better than you think."

"You only think that because you're too good for this world, let alone me," Klaus groaned. "Just let me go. I need to go get high now. All I wanted for the last three years was to save you. And I did it! Yay me! But it wasn't so that I could _have_ you. I thought you wouldn't join the army and we'd never even meet."

"Do you _want_ to get away from me?" Dave asked. He wasn't even remotely afraid that that was the case—Klaus's joy at their reunion had very obviously been just as much as Dave's own—but he needed to push Klaus through whatever this was right now.

"I don't deserve you. I'm not good enough. I'm going to spoil it."

"You do, you are, you're not," Dave countered patiently. Klaus got like this sometimes. Dave didn't let it get to him. "Let's go back to Vanya's."

Klaus stood up, but hugged himself miserably. "We can try that," he said, "but I don't think I'm making it through the rest of this day without taking some pills or shooting up."

"Because of Sam and Knuckles?"

"Yes. No. Yes and no," Klaus hedged in a desperate little singsong. "I guess you could say I don't process grief very well, or _any_ emotions really, without chemical assistance, but actually maybe the key point is I'm already getting dope-sick. And I don't think I'm ready to deal with that."

Dave frowned. "Withdrawal, you mean?"

"I'm starting to get the aches and the shakes," Klaus said. "It's been building all morning."

Dave eyed Klaus's barely-nibbled pizza slice. Yeah, okay. That tracked.

Except, wait. "You got high _once_ ," Dave pointed out. "You were clean for three years, up till last Tuesday, right?"

"Well, give or take a four-day alcoholic bender leading up to the day of the Kennedy assassination," Klaus said.

"I don't think that would get you in deep enough to lead to real withdrawal," Dave told him. "Maybe it's psychological." He looked at Klaus's hollow, fever-bright eyes. "Or maybe you're not dope-sick, you're just regular sick. You've had a hell of a past few days."

Klaus looked puzzled, and then hopeful. "You think?"

"I think we should get you back to Vanya's," Dave said, "and take it from there."


	9. Chapter 9

Coming up on Vanya's, they heard music through the door. Violin. Dave thought he recognized the piece—Chopin, from an LP his mom used to play. The music stopped when he knocked, and when Vanya opened the door she had a violin in her hand. "Oh, you're back already," she said, giving them her usual tentative smile. "Come in."

"Hey," Diego said. He was sprawled in the armchair.

"You should put your coats over the back of a chair," Vanya suggested, heading back to her music stand by the front windows. "To dry." She lifted her violin. "Do you mind? I really need to practice. I'm supposed to have this piece concert-ready, but on my timeline it's been over a month since I last played it."

"Is anybody else here?" Dave asked, following Vanya's instructions with the coats.

"Naw, Allison and Luther went out to lunch too," Diego said. "And Five's ... who knows. Out there doing his thing."

At that point Vanya lifted her bow, and Chopin filled the air again.

It seemed rude to talk, so Dave silently led Klaus to the couch. Dave sat at one end, and Klaus flopped down with his head on Dave's lap and his feet dangling over the opposite arm. Klaus's hands rested loosely on his belly. Dave reached one hand down to thread his fingers through Klaus's; he let his other hand rest in Klaus's hair, fingers lightly massaging Klaus's scalp. Klaus closed his eyes with a faint, strained-looking smile.

Vanya played.

She was very good, Dave thought. At least, she sounded a lot like the LP.

Dave had never heard a professional musician rehearse before. Even though everything she played sounded perfect to Dave, she kept frowning, stopping, re-playing a short section several times before moving on.

"I'm sorry," she said once after repeating the same 15-second phrase six times in a row. "This can't be very interesting to listen to."

"It's nice," Diego said. "Reminds me of when we were kids."

"Is that something that any of us wants to be reminded of?" Vanya asked.

"Just that we're family," Diego said. "And we're going to do better this time."

"Keep playing, sis," Klaus said without opening his eyes. Dave was a little surprised; he'd thought Klaus had drifted off to sleep. "The music helps."

Vanya lifted her bow again but didn't yet touch it to the strings. She gave Klaus a quizzical look. "Helps with what?"

"Klaus thinks he's going into opiate withdrawal," Dave answered for him. "I think he's maybe coming down with the flu or something. Either way, he's struggling against an urge to go out and get high right now."

"Klaus?" Vanya asked, sounding concerned.

"What he said," Klaus confirmed. Eyes still closed, but his fingers gave Dave's a quick squeeze. "It's a little ... overwhelming right now. But with Dave holding on to me and your music filling me up, I think I can ride this one out."

"Huh," Diego said. "Dave, I think you're good for my brother."

Vanya looked thoughtful, and then her bow sprang into action. It wasn't the Chopin this time—it was something darker and richer. Beethoven, Dave realized after a moment, as the appropriate cardboard sleeve from his mom's LP collection floated up before his mind's eye. The Moonlight Sonata. Vanya played it all the way through, and then stopped and looked at Klaus.

Klaus smiled without opening his eyes. "I always loved that one," he said.

"I know," Vanya said. "How are you doing, Klaus?"

"Pretty crappy," Klaus said. "Will you keep playing?"

"Is it okay if I go back to the rehearsal pieces?" Vanya asked. "With all the stopping and starting?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's fine," Klaus murmured. "Love you, sis."

"I love you too," Vanya said, and lifted her bow.

* * *

Klaus napped on Dave's lap for a few hours after Vanya finished playing, and woke up coughing and sniffling.

"Told you so," Dave said mildly.

"You don't have to be so smug about it," Klaus said. "You sound like Ben." He moaned, curled up into a ball, and coughed.

"But this is good," Dave said. "It's not withdrawal. You just have to rest, and you'll get better."

"Klaus, you sound terrible," Allison said. She was at the little table in the dining nook. The other siblings were scattered around the space: Diego was still in the armchair, reading a book, Luther was at the table with Allison helping her sort through takeout menus, Vanya was in sight in the kitchen, washing the afternoon's coffee cups, and Five was at her side with a dish towel. "How are you feeling?" Allison added.

"Strangely relieved," Klaus said. "I feel like shit and it's not my fault for once."

"I wouldn't go that far," Diego said. "Pretty sure your whole overdose-and-freeze-to-death routine had something to do with getting you here."

"What do you want for supper, Klaus?" Luther asked. "Right now the vote is two for Indian, two for Mexican, and two for fried chicken. You can tie-break."

"I don't care," Klaus said. "I'm not hungry."

"Has he got a temperature?" Diego asked. "Feed a fever, starve a cold."

Allison rolled her eyes. "Are you kidding me? That's an old wives' tale. _And_ you got it backwards." She turned back to Luther. "Klaus likes tacos. I'll count his vote for Mexican. Mexican wins."

"Actually," Klaus said feebly, "if I have to eat something, I'd rather a curry."

"Ha!" said Five. "Nice try, Allison."

Dave, meanwhile, had laid a hand on Klaus's forehead. "You do feel pretty hot," he told him, with a bit of concern.

"Hm," Vanya said from the kitchen. "Maybe I should check him with the thermometer." She headed for the back of the apartment.

"Mom never needed a thermometer," Diego said, in a tone of reminiscence. "She could tell if you were sick or faking it just by looking at you."

"Mom was a robot," Luther said. "She could probably see into the infrared."

"Your mom was a _robot_?" Dave repeated.

"You knew we were adopted," Klaus murmured.

"Is that a normal thing, here in the future?" Dave asked. "Robot moms?"

"No," Allison said. "I think ours was the only one."

"Our nanny was a talking chimp," Klaus added, grinning up at Dave.

Vanya, coming back into the living room with the thermometer in her hand, stopped in her tracks. "Pogo," she said, with a devastated expression. "I killed him in the other timeline."

"Yeah," Luther agreed, rubbing his chin uncomfortably. "You sure did."

"I'm a monster," Vanya breathed.

"You've killed _all_ of us in one timeline or another," Five said. "Well, maybe not Dave."

"Five," Allison snapped. "Lay off her."

"I'm trying to be supportive," Five said. "I'm saying—don't worry about it, Vanya. It's water under a bridge that doesn't even exist anymore."

"Vanya needs a hug," Klaus said. "Somebody—oh fuck, whatever, I'll do it." He heaved himself up and lurched across the small room to his sister, and wrapped his arms around her rigid, narrow shoulders. "There, there," he said, tucking his chin against her head.

Vanya's eyes squeezed shut and brimmed with tears.

"You're not a monster, Vanya," Allison added, joining the hug on the other side. "You were hurting. Your choices had been taken away from you. You didn't have a chance to learn who you really were or how to control your powers. I am so sorry for my part in that."

"C'mon guys," Diego said to Luther and Five, standing up. "We're not too manly for this group hug." Reaching the cluster of siblings, he put one arm around Allison and one around Klaus, indirectly encircling Vanya.

"Oh, all right," Five grumbled, and went in opposite Diego. A little taller than Vanya but shorter than the others, he hugged Vanya around the waist.

Luther got there last, looking tentative. "Okay if I join, Vanya?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said. "I trust you not to do it again."

( _Do what?_ Dave wondered. But he didn't ask.)

"Anyway, he'd crush all of us if he tried that now." Diego said, as Luther's huge arms encircled his siblings. "Not that he couldn't."

"From now on, I only use my strength to protect you," Luther promised. "All of you."

"Oh God this is sappy," Five moaned, but he didn't break away. "You guys are all idiots, but you're my idiots."

* * *

Dave was awakened sometime in the middle of the night by Klaus climbing out of bed and pulling on pants.

"What are you doing?" Dave murmured, rolling up onto one elbow. He could see Klaus easily by the light of the bedside lamp that Klaus had insisted they leave on all night.

"Don't worry about it," Klaus said, and coughed. "Go back to sleep," he added.

"Only if you come back to bed," Dave said.

Klaus kept getting dressed. "I've been awake for a while. I was having fucked-up dreams. I need some air."

"Klaus..." Dave rolled the question around in his mind for a moment before he asked it. He was still, honestly, trying to get a handle on how things were going to be different between them now than they had been in Vietnam. "Are you going out to get high?"

Klaus gave a guilty flinch, followed by a wide-eyed look of put-upon innocence. "You said you wouldn't stop me," he said. "And that you'd love me anyway."

That wasn't _exactly_ what Dave had said. Although the second part was true. "That was before you were sick," Dave said. "I'm pulling rank. Come back to bed."

"No, sorry, I've decided," Klaus said. Hopping on one foot, he started pulling on a boot. Dave's boot, specifically. "This is too hard. I'm going back to normal. Don't worry about the overdose thing from before. I was crushingly depressed and rudderless. I'll be okay now that you're here. I just need to take the edge off."

"I'm not letting you leave this apartment tonight," Dave said mildly.

Klaus gave a tight little grin. "You think you're going to stop me?" He finished pulling on the second boot. Dave's second boot.

"Not directly," Dave admitted. He doubted that he could. When he and Klaus play-wrestled, Klaus always won unless he wanted to lose. This had somewhat miffed Dave back in Vietnam, but now that he'd heard some of the siblings' childhood stories about training in hand-to-hand combat as toddlers, Dave understood why he was outclassed. "But Vanya's asleep on the couch. If I yell for help, she'll ... pin you to the ceiling, or something."

Klaus's face fell. "She could do that, yeah." He wavered for a moment, and then sank to the floor in a gracefully-controlled collapse that ended with him sitting with his knees up by his ears and his arms crossed over the back of his neck. "I can't do this, sweetie," he said, the words muffled nearly to inaudibility by his position. "It's too hard."

"You feel like you're in withdrawal, but you're not," Dave reminded him. "You're sick with a fever." When Vanya had finally gotten around to checking Klaus's temperature after the group hug, it had been at 102. Allison, playing the I'm-a-mom-and-I-know-how-to-deal-with-this card, had prescribed rest, fluids, and careful monitoring. Klaus had spent the evening napping on the couch, wrapped in blankets and watched over by Dave plus two to four moderately anxious siblings at all times. His fever had dropped to 101 by bedtime, and Allison had expressed confidence that he'd be fine with a few days' rest. The siblings had headed off to their various sleeping places, and Dave had carried Klaus to bed. "Come back to bed," Dave added. "What were you dreaming about?"

"I don't know, it was all mixed up," Klaus said from the floor. "Ghosts, Dad, the mausoleum, the A Shau, Ben." He lifted his head. "No, I remember. Dad locked me in the mausoleum, and then I couldn't get to Hill 689 in time to save Ben."

Dave didn't try the 'it was just a dream' line. The elements might be mixed up, but they all came from real trauma and loss. He climbed out of bed and sat on the floor next to Klaus, wrapping an arm around him. "What mausoleum?" he asked, picking out the one dream-element he didn't recognize.

Klaus gave a hollow little laugh. "The one Dad used to lock me into overnight, to try to kick-start my ghostie powers. It fucking worked. After that, I could only turn the ghosts off by drinking." He wrapped himself into a slightly tighter ball. "That's why I don't like to be alone in the dark. I go back there."

"Back there—the way loud noises send you back to the A Shau?"

"Yes, exactly," Klaus said, sounding pleased at being understood. He lifted his head, finally, to nestle it against Dave's shoulder. "So you see why I told everybody not to worry about the Vietnam PTSD. I was already fucked up long before the A Shau. What's one more trigger?"

Klaus's logic was definitely not sound. And Dave remembered that Allison had been pretty concerned when she'd learned about the flashbacks. "Do your siblings know about this?" he asked.

"Noooo," Klaus said. "Well, Ben did, but he's ... gone. You gotta understand, sweetie, this whole thing where we have family meetings all the time and talk to each other and hug it out, that's _new_. Like, you've seen almost all of it."

"Okay, so let's talk to them about it tomorrow."

"Ugh, now you're sounding like Ben," Klaus said. But then he nuzzled his face against Dave's neck; his scraggly beard tickled Dave's sensitive skin. "Only it always pissed me off when he tried to save me from myself, and when you do it it's kind of sexy."

"Good," Dave said. "Will you come back to bed if I promise to fuck you?"

"Oh my little-girl-on-a-bicyle, yes," Klaus said.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day was Monday, local time. Vanya had rehearsal. Diego had work. Allison went out house-hunting. Klaus dragged himself out of bed long enough to eat breakfast, coughing and sniffling miserably, and then went back to sleep.

Result: Luther, Five and Dave at loose ends, gathered in Vanya's living room.

"I don't really know what I'm going to do next," Luther was saying, hunched over in the armchair with a coffee mug cradled between his big hands. "I just spent four years doing nothing on the moon. That's not a great line on my CV."

"Hey, my job skills consist of pawing through rubble looking for canned goods, and killing people," Five said. "And I look like I'm 13 years old. I think I might actually have you beat, in the no-clear-career-direction sweepstakes."

"At least our movie star sister is letting us mooch off of her indefinitely," Luther sighed.

"I think I get where you're coming from. I felt awfully lost when I left the army," Dave confided. "Luckily my uncle was happy to take me back at the hardware store. I actually liked working there."

"In our case, all of the positions at the family business have been filled by usurping strangers from another timeline," Five grouched.

"And Ben," Luther added.

"Who _is_ , now, an usurping stranger from another timeline," Five pointed out.

"Yeah, uh ... Klaus is taking that pretty hard," Dave mentioned.

"Klaus doesn't deal well with _anything_ ," Luther said. "What else is new?"

Dave tapped his fingers along the rim of his own coffee mug, and considered his next words carefully for a moment. He saw what was going on here; the siblings had explained their own toxic dynamics to him repeatedly over the past few days. "Luther," he said, "I know Klaus better than you do."

Luther gave Dave a skeptical look. "I've known him his whole life."

Dave shook his head. "You knew him when you were kids. But if I'm understanding all this crazy time travel stuff correctly, you've only spent a few days together as adults."

"True," Luther said.

"I spent ten months with him in a war zone. He's not weak."

Luther took a breath, seemed like he was going to say something, thought better of it, and then nodded. "Sorry," he said. "I know the Ben thing was harder for him. The rest of us lost Ben half a lifetime ago; Klaus lost him last week." He frowned thoughtfully. "I was jealous of Klaus," he said. "When we were kids."

"Seriously, oh ye mighty Number One?" Five asked, raising an eyebrow. "What's that about?"

"It's about _that_ , exactly," Luther said. "Dad expected more from me, and I always had to give it to him. Klaus—he just stopped trying. Escaped into the alcohol and drugs. And Dad's expectations of him dropped, and Klaus got to just slide on by."

"I know something about those kinds of expectations," Dave said. "My dad and my uncle, they were both soldiers. World War Two and Korea, respectively. And they expected me to grow into that same mold—not just _like_ them, but actually better, like a cast-bronze statue of the idealized soldier. There wasn't any room for the parts of me that didn't fit. Like, the part of me that loved men."

"Well, it was the mid-twentieth century," Five said. "You should try hanging out with some ancient Spartans, say, from the Peloponnesian War. They have a very different perspective on soldiers and manliness."

Dave chose not to admit that he had no idea what Five was talking about. Frankly, he had no idea what Five was talking about at least half of the time. "So I get what you're saying," he said instead to Luther, just ignoring the digression, "about envying Klaus's freedom from expectations." He frowned. "But I don't think your dad was actually less hard on Klaus than on anybody else. Did Klaus ever tell you about the mausoleum?"

Luther looked a little puzzled. "Well, he trained there. Something to do with the ghosts."

"Ah." Dave scowled. And then explained what Klaus had told him during the night.

"Oh," Luther said at the end. "Yeah, that does explain some things. Shit."

"Dad was the worst," Five said, with equanimity. "I have no regrets about missing the last six years of all that. I mean, I wish I'd been somewhere more _pleasant_ instead of the apocalypse, but..." he shrugged.

"So what are you planning to _do_ with Klaus?" Luther asked Dave. "I mean, okay, he's fucked up for some pretty good reasons, but—he is seriously fucked up."

"Well, uh..." Dave trailed off. "I don't know," he admitted after a minute. "I didn't exactly come here with a plan. Lila rescued me from that assassin, and then it was just one thing after another. I sure never expected to see Klaus again after he died in my arms on Hill 689. Now that I've got him back, I never want to let him go. But ... I'm kind of afraid he's going to slip through my fingers."

"He seems to be exceptionally resistant to death by misadventure," Five said, clearly aiming to be comforting. "So there's that, at least."

"He really seems to like you," Luther offered. "That might actually help. In terms of keeping him from going too far off the rails."

"Maybe," Dave said, without a lot of confidence. "In Vietnam—I couldn't stop him from using. But we had a kind of equilibrium. We had a really fucking dangerous job to do, and he let me set boundaries that kept him mostly operational. Here—there's no structure. We don't have jobs. Fuck, _I_ don't have a job, and I don't know how I'm going to get one. I don't even have ID."

Five's head popped up with a grin. "Oh, finally, a simple problem I can definitely solve," he said. "How old are you, Dave?"

Dave blinked. "Uh, thirty."

"Perfect. Be right back." Five disappeared into thin air.

"Don't worry, he does this kind of thing a lot," Luther said. "Vanishes, I mean. Without really explaining what he's doing."

"Yeah, I'm picking up on that," Dave agreed.

And then Five was back. He'd changed his clothes slightly—he was wearing long gray trousers in place of the shorts, and he'd ditched the jacket. He handed a couple of pieces of paper to Dave.

It was a birth certificate, and a social security card.

"There you go," Five said with a smirk. "Those are as solid as can be. I bribed a midwife in 1989 to register your birth."

Luther leaned over and peered at the birth certificate. "You gave him _our_ birthday."

Five shrugged. "It seemed like an auspicious day."

Dave stared at him. "You just time-traveled to 1989 to get me fake ID?"

"Well, I teleported to the location of the hidden time-travel briefcase, time-traveled from there, and then made a few stops along the way back to shore up your paperwork," Five said. "You're welcome."

"Fucking hell, Five," Dave said. "What if you'd screwed up the timeline and we didn't even exist when you got back?"

Five rolled his eyes. "I've told you. There's nothing to worry about; I used to do this professionally. The timeline resists changes."

"Tell that to the Sparrow Academy," Luther said. "I'm telling Diego and the girls when they get back, Five. You've gotta hand that briefcase over to somebody more trustworthy."

"Like you?"

"Like Allison," Luther suggested. "She could make you, you know."

"If she was willing to do that," Five said, "then she wouldn't _be_ trustworthy, would she?"

Luther looked like he's swallowed something unpleasant. Finally, he said, "Just promise not to use it again without ... without at least having a family meeting about it first."

Five looked momentarily rebellious, but then he sighed. "Okay, you big lunk," he said. "To keep the peace in our newly functional family unit—I promise."

* * *

After that, things went surprisingly smoothly for the better part of a week.

Vanya kept up her schedule of rehearsals, and started a 10-day series of performances on Wednesday night. She spent a lot of her free time at home practicing, and Klaus loved listening to her.

Klaus didn't do much more than sleep on Monday and Tuesday, but then he started to perk up. His fever went away, the cough got better, and he started eating properly. Wednesday, he thanked Dave profusely for having stopped him from going out and getting high like an idiot while he was sick. And then, to Dave's bemusement, Klaus spent the day trying to teach him meditation. And yoga.

Diego managed to get Luther a part-time job as a 'personal trainer' at the gym where he worked himself as a janitor. Dave had never heard of that job before, but when the siblings explained it, he thought it sounded like a pretty great fit for somebody raised the way Luther had been.

"Do you think you could do something like that, too?" Dave asked Klaus at one point, but Klaus only laughed.

Allison found a house that she liked, put in an offer, and had it accepted. The move-in date was May 1st, three weeks away, so she kept her suite at the Hilton for the time being.

All of the siblings kept up the habit of spending most of their down time at Vanya's place. When Dave found out from Luther that Allison's suite at the Hilton was actually bigger than Vanya's whole apartment, he asked why the siblings didn't spend more time there instead.

"Well," Luther said, looking thoughtful, "when we were kids, we excluded Vanya. And then she blew up the moon and ended the world. So I guess it seems right to make her our new center, for a while."

It was true, Vanya seemed fairly pleased with her filled-to-the-brim apartment situation—if, at times, slightly overwhelmed. And she didn't say a single word about wanting her own bed back. But Dave decided that he and Klaus should really get their own apartment sooner rather than later. Somewhere close by, for sure. But a place of their own.

Step one: at least one of them needed a job. So Dave pounded the pavement.

He had ID, but no references. He hoped he could get over that hump using the force of his personality. He'd been told that he was fairly charismatic, and that he came across as trustworthy. So at every place he applied, he asked to see the manager, and engaged in as much polite chit-chat as he could get away with.

The strategy paid off quickly. Thursday afternoon, in a small neighborhood hardware store not too different from the one his uncle had owned, Dave managed to sweet-talk himself into a part-time job stocking shelves starting the next day.

So it felt like everything was falling into place pretty nicely.

And then he got home from his first shift on Friday, and discovered that Klaus was missing.

* * *

"He went out early this afternoon to buy milk, and he never came back," Vanya explained. "Everybody's out looking for him. I stayed here in case he came back, and to be by the phone."

Dave felt his stomach clenching. "Why didn't you call me?"

"It was your first day of work. We didn't want to mess that up for you." She glanced at the clock on the wall. "Speaking of which—I should have left for the symphony hall ten minutes ago. I was waiting for you, so I could explain. Can you take over here?"

"Uh, sure," Dave said, and she was gone almost before he had the words out—she'd already had her coat on, and her violin case close to hand.

Dave sat down, and stood up. Paced.

He wanted to be out looking for Klaus too, but he saw the logic of having somebody manning home base. Every once in a while the phone rang, and Dave's heart raced, but it was always one of the siblings saying that they hadn't found him yet, and asking if anybody else had.

There was still no news of Klaus when Vanya got _back_ from her concert, close to eleven p.m..

"Do you want to go out looking yourself?" she asked, eyes soft with sympathy.

Of course Dave did.

"Don't forget to check back in once in a while," Vanya reminded him. "If anybody finds him, they'll tell me."

Dave agreed, made sure he had some coins for pay phones, and set out on foot.

He still barely knew the neighborhood, but he figured he couldn't go wrong with an expanding-spiral search pattern, starting from Vanya's place. Maybe some of the others had already covered the same ground earlier, but if Klaus was moving—or hard to spot—they might have missed him.

It was cold and raining again. Spring in the North was miserable. Dave missed Dallas.

Except he _didn't_ miss Dallas, not really, because he'd never had Klaus there.

Wherever Klaus was, that was the best part of the world. It could be a war zone in Vietnam or a drizzly concrete jungle. Klaus just had to be _okay_.

Dave kept walking. And looking. And hoping.

* * *

Dave didn't find Klaus. But the second time he called Vanya's place, a little after one in the morning, she said, "Diego and Eudora found him. He's okay. They're bringing him here."

So Dave basically flew back to Vanya's. He got there ahead of Klaus. Luther and Allison were present, having also checked in and heard the news. Five was still out looking.

Only a couple of minutes after Dave arrived, there was a pounding at the apartment's door. Dave opened it, and faced Diego and Eudora, who were managing to balance a floppy Klaus between them.

"You said he was okay," Dave protested as he stood aside to let them in.

"He is," Diego said as he and Eudora steered Klaus over to the couch. "He's just high."

"Dammit, Klaus, you were doing so _well_ ," Allison said.

Klaus giggled. "I'm doing _great_."

Dave tucked himself in at Klaus's side, kissed him with a feeling of stupid relief—okay, he was high, but he was safe—and started examining him for signs of injury.

"Oh, Dave, you're so pretty," Klaus murmured.

"What did he take?" Luther asked.

Diego shook his head. "We don't know."

"Just some Molly," Klaus crooned. "Everything's okay now."

Vanya shook her head, looking blank. "What is that?"

"He probably means MDMA," Eudora said. "Ecstasy."

"What happened, Klaus?" Dave asked him quietly. Everything had been fine when Dave had headed off to work in the morning. "You went out to get milk."

"Oh, well, there was a jackhammer," Klaus said. The memory made him frown, even through his drug-induced euphoria. "Sent me back to the A Shau for a bit. I came to in an alley and the sweetest hooker was crouching over me, checking to see if I was okay. She had on rainbow lycra leggings. That should've been a clue. She helped me up, and I saw her throat was slit. She'd been dead since the '80s. She asked me if I knew where to score some dope, and I told her yes."

"Okay," Allison said, stifling a yawn. "That's it. Family meeting tomorrow about Klaus's PTSD. Dave, are you okay with him for tonight?"

"Yeah," Dave sighed, wrapping Klaus up in a gentle hug. Klaus snuggled into his embrace and murmured something unintelligible. "I've got him."

* * *

"So, now what?" Luther asked.

They'd convened in Vanya's living room at eleven in the morning. Vanya had brewed coffee for the occasion in the restaurant-sized coffee-maker that Five had brought her earlier in the week—and she'd remembered to warn Klaus and Dave before she ground the beans, so that they could be in another room with the door closed.

Klaus and Dave had the couch again. Klaus was subdued, huddled over his coffee mug.

The other siblings had pulled a sufficient number of chairs into a rough semi-circle around the coffee table, facing the couch—except for Diego, who leaned against the wall by the fireplace, fiddling with a knife as usual.

"How are you doing, Klaus?" Allison asked.

Klaus gave a feeble shrug. "Molly comedown's a bitch," he said. "I could really use a little something to level it out."

"I can get you some aspirin," Vanya offered with a thin smile.

"No, I don't have a headache," Klaus said. "I just want to kill myself."

Dave turned to him sharply. "Honey, what?!"

"No no no, don't worry," Klaus winced, patting Dave's knee. "It's not a real feeling, it's just the day-after blues. I can handle it."

"He's talking about the serotonin crash," Allison said. "It's a pretty common MDMA after-effect."

Several of the siblings gave Allison variously curious looks, but Luther was the one who said in a tone of concern, "How do you know that?"

Allison rolled her eyes. "I don't do drugs, guys. But I've spent a decade in Hollywood. I _know_ lots of people who do drugs."

Klaus gave a wan smile. "You should hook me up with some of them, sis! That would be fun."

She glared. "Definitely not."

Five cleared his throat. He was sitting cross-legged in his chair; he'd changed back into the complete schoolboy uniform that he usually wore. "So what exactly is our goal for this meeting?" he asked. "Are we trying to fix Klaus? Because I think that might be a lost cause."

"We're not trying to fix him," Allison said. "We're trying to _support_ him. He had a bad experience yesterday, and we don't want it to spiral into something worse. Right?"

"No blowing up the moon," Vanya said with a sideways look at her sister.

"Eugh," Five said, "I really wish you would stop using that as an all-purpose metaphor for emotional distress."

"Okay, no metaphors," Allison said. "I'm worried that Klaus is going to seriously harm himself."

"Well, that's a given," Diego said from over by the fireplace. Flipping his knife. "He already has."

"Okay, I'm worried Klaus is going to _keep_ seriously harming himself until eventually he can't come back from it," Allison clarified. "And I want to prevent that."

"How?" asked Vanya. She at least looked open to the idea. Five and Luther were looking fairly skeptical. Diego was harder to read—but Dave suddenly remembered that in the other reality, the one only Eudora remembered, Diego had been the one watching out for Klaus for years. Whatever that meant.

"I think we need to start by acknowledging what he's dealing with," Allison said. "He fought in the Vietnam War, and he has PTSD."

"We _all_ have PTSD," Diego muttered. "From growing up with Dad."

"That's probably true," Vanya said. "I mean, I did some therapy in the other timeline, where I could be open about my connection to the Umbrella Academy."

"Okay, we all have issues," Allison acknowledged. "But Klaus is having literal, debilitating flashbacks."

"Not just from Vietnam," Dave interjected. And told them about the mausoleum—which was news to Allison, Vanya and Diego, who hadn't been around when he'd mentioned it to Luther and Five.

" _Fuck_ Dad," Diego spat out at the end of it, and threw his knife. It zipped over all their heads, and lodged in a door frame.

"Hey," Vanya said, "no need to take it out on my woodwork, okay?"

"So there's all that," Allison said, "and the fact that he's been using alcohol and drugs to run from his problems since he was thirteen."

"Hey," Klaus said, "I was using alcohol and drugs to _deal_ with my problems. And it worked great."

"Oh yeah, real great," Diego said. "You were homeless, strung out, living blow job to blow job."

"Those weren't the problems," Klaus said. "The ghosts were the problem. The drugs kept them away pretty nicely."

"But you're dealing with the ghosts a lot better now," Allison reminded him. "So now the drugs are the problem."

"Weeelll..." Klaus hedged, and sipped at his coffee. "Are they really?"

"Klaus honey," Dave said quietly, "what feels better? Being with me when your head is clear, or when you're all messed up?"

Klaus groaned, put down his coffee, and pressed his hands to his forehead. "You manipulative bastard. You know there's only one way I can answer that question."

"I'm not trying to manipulate you," Dave promised. "I loved you the whole time in Vietnam, through your highs and your lows. I'm going to love you here, no matter what. I'll take whatever future I can get with you. If I did get to choose, I'd choose the one where you're sober, because I think that one will last a lot longer than the one where you're not. But I don't get to choose, do I? That's up to you. What do _you_ want, Klaus?"

"Blech," Five said. "I'm going to get diabetes and die from the sweetness."

"Shut up, Five," said both Allison and Diego, more or less simultaneously.

"Fuck," Klaus said, leaning against Dave. "Okay, yes. Yes. I want to stay sober. I just don't know how."

"It's great to hear you say that, Klaus," Allison said, sounding downright cheerful. "That's a really important first step."

"Do you think we could get him into, like, a methadone program or something?" Vanya asked, looking thoughtful.

Allison shook her head. "That's not what he needs. He got clean in the '60s, remember. He doesn't currently have an active dependency. I mean, he will soon, if he keeps up like he's going. But for now that's not an issue."

"So why does he keep using?" Diego asked.

"Because that's his reaction to trauma," Vanya said, looking at Klaus carefully. "Right?"

"Well, that's no help," Luther said. "If he's set off by loud noises and the dark—he's just a constant backslide waiting to happen."

"What if Allison rumored him sober?" Five said suddenly, straightening his back.

Everyone looked at him in shock.

"Well? It would work, wouldn't it?" Five said.

"Ah, probably," Allison said, sounding a little dazed. "But no. I mean, .... no."

"No no no no no no no," Klaus reiterated, curling up into a ball and covering his ears. "I don't want to be mind-controlled."

"And I'm not going to mind-control my brother," Allison said firmly.

"Yeah, nothing good comes from that," Vanya said. "Sorry to keep poking the sore spot, Five, but that is _definitely_ moon-blowing-up territory."

"Okay, okay," Five said. "If you all refuse to consider the easy, obvious, definitely-would-work solution ... does anybody have any other ideas?"

"Klaus," Allison said, "you stayed clean for three years up until last week. And it wasn't under easier circumstances than what you're facing here. You'd just lost Dave. You were seeing ghosts, you were having flashbacks. How did you do it?"

Klaus uncurled, and gave Allison a wary look before he spoke. "Well, I had a goal," he said. "I had to make it to Dallas midway through November 1963 so that I could talk Dave out of joining the army. Sometimes when I'm high I lose whole months. Or more. I woke up on my 25th birthday not remembering anything that had happened since I was 22. I couldn't afford for that to happen while I was waiting to meet Dave."

"You had a goal yesterday," Five said dryly. "To go get the milk."

"So, I'm hearing that having that goal helped give you focus," Allison said, ignoring Five. "What about now? Could you have a goal of, say, meeting Dave in the evening when he gets home from work?"

"Yes," Klaus said promptly.

"That didn't help yesterday," Vanya pointed out.

"Well, there was the jackhammer," Klaus said. "And the dead prostitute who wanted to get high with me."

"Similar things must have happened lots of times in the last three years," Allison said. "How did you cope?"

"It was sort of easy because Ben was always with me," Klaus said, plucking at a loose thread on Dave's sleeve and avoiding eye contact with everybody. "And the Destiny's Children, too, I mean they were pretty tiring, but they were always good for company."

"So the solution is he needs to start a new cult?" Five suggested acerbically.

"I think what I'm hearing is that we need to make sure Klaus always has company," Allison said. "If somebody had gone with him when he went to get milk, he wouldn't have been caught out alone dealing with the flashback. Klaus, do you think that would have helped?"

"Ah..." Klaus looked a little caught off balance. "I guess so."

"So we just need to make a schedule," Allison went on. "This won't be hard; there's a lot of us. And I guess the rest of us only need to handle the times while Dave's at work. Or, if ever Dave needs to go do anything else on his own, we could set that up too."

"Wow, uh, Allison," Klaus hedged, "that sounds a little—"

"This only works if you're behind it," she interrupted him. "I mean, the idea here isn't that we all babysit you and restrict your movements. You have to want this; you have to choose to stick with us, and choose to stay sober."

Five raised his hand. "Did I miss the part where we all agreed to this?"

"I'm in," Diego said from the fireplace. "And I'm available pretty much all the time. He could be at the gym while I'm working."

Allison smiled warmly at him.

"Me too," Vanya said. "Klaus, I could bring you along to my rehearsals at the symphony hall, if you'd like that."

"I'll help out," Luther said, nodding. "I promised I'd protect all of you, from now on. I meant it."

"Okay, okay," Five said. "When you need me, I'll be there."

"Yeah, and I still want to spend as much time with you as I possibly can," Dave said to Klaus, taking his hand. "Obviously. So do you think Allison's plan is okay?"

Klaus stared around at them all. "Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice wavering. "I'm not worth it."

"Oh, Klaus baby," Allison said softly, leaving her chair and transferring to the couch, next to Klaus. She wrapped her arms around him. "Yes you are. You always were. I'm sorry I was too caught up in my own stuff to see it."

Klaus's eyes squeezed shut, and he let out a sharp whimper.

Dave joined the hug from the other side, and felt Klaus's breath hitching. "It's going to be okay," he promised.

"Fuuuck," Klaus wailed softly, and dissolved into sobs.

"Hey," Vanya said, approaching them and resting a hand on the back of Klaus's neck, "we're all here."

"Are we about to have _another_ group hug?" Five asked, sounding vaguely disgusted.

"You bet your ass we are," Diego said. "Let's get in there, little old man."

A bit of shifting around was required. Vanya's couch was awkwardly shaped for the purpose. But in a few moments, Diego, Five and Luther had all managed to inject themselves into the tangle in one way or another. Klaus, wracked now with rhythmic, gasping sobs, was encircled in every possible way, and all of the siblings had managed to make contact with him somehow—a hand on his shoulder, on his back, on his head.

"Shhhh," Dave soothed reflexively. "It's been a lot, I know."

"Could somebody explain what's happening here?" Five asked, without moving away. "Are we helping Klaus, or fucking him up? Why is he crying like that?"

"Catharsis, Five," Allison said. "It may not have looked like it, but he was holding himself together for a really long time."

"That's what Klaus looked like when he was holding himself _together_?"

"Shut up, Five," chorused several voices.

The tone of Klaus's sobs shifted—he was laughing in the middle of crying. "Sh—sh—shut up Five," he echoed the others, in a high-pitched tone half-strangled by his own ongoing laughter and tears. "You'll get your turn."

"Oh, please no," Five said. "Tell you what, count this one for me too. Hugs, togetherness, yay."

They all held on until Klaus's sobs quieted into hiccups, and then even for a little while longer.

"So..." Allison said finally, "my room at the Hilton has a giant TV and a king-sized bed. Who's up for a Saturday afternoon Princess Bride watch party and cuddle?"

"What's a Princess Bride?" Dave asked.

"My favorite movie!" Klaus gasped. "Allison, you're brilliant!"

"Sure," Vanya said. "I don't have to be at the concert hall until six thirty."

"Is there room for me?" Luther asked.

"Of course there is," Allison said. "We'll put you at the back of the bed, and the rest of us can sort ourselves out around you."

"I'm in," Diego said. "C'mon, Five, you should come too. You saved us from all the apocalypses. Settle down and enjoy our company."

"Yeesh," Five said. "Okay."

"I love you guys," Klaus murmured, somehow squirming a little deeper into the middle of the ongoing hug. "Fuck, I love you guys."


	11. Chapter 11

And then, life was really good.

Allison's plan was implemented immediately. Right after the Princess Bride viewing, and before Vanya disappeared off to her performance, Allison asked Dave for his work schedule for the coming week, and then allotted all the necessary hours to available siblings.

As the week progressed, Dave watched Klaus carefully for signs that he was chafing at the arrangement. But he didn't seem to mind being passed from sibling to sibling like a package. If Dave himself were in Klaus's position, he was pretty sure that he'd quickly get bored and squirrelly. But Klaus's life had, if nothing else, prepared him to take idleness in stride.

At the gym under Diego's or Luther's supervision, Klaus claimed a mat and a space in the corner, and spent the time meditating and doing yoga. Out with Allison, he happily window-shopped and drank fruit smoothies. (Dave went along with them once and was bored to tears by their fashion talk, but found the blended frozen fruit drinks a delicious revelation—another little entry in the 'nice things about the future' column.) At Vanya's rehearsals, Klaus sat quietly near the back of the theater and enjoyed the music. Five was the least-frequent companion; a couple of times he used Klaus as his ticket into R-rated movies, but in deference to Klaus's trauma they avoided action-heavy flicks.

The first real test of the arrangement came early one evening when Klaus and Vanya were walking back to her apartment together from the concert hall. Three fire trucks came screaming around the corner and zipped right by them. Klaus's reaction wasn't outwardly dramatic—he pressed himself against the wall of the building they were passing, and stopped moving. Vanya, relating the story to Dave afterwards, confessed that she didn't even realize what was happening at first.

"Klaus? What's up?" she'd asked, backtracking a few steps to where he'd stopped.

He hadn't said anything, or looked at her.

"Klaus?" Vanya had repeated, puzzled—and then made the connection with the firetrucks. "Okay," she'd said, taking his hand and feeling it trembling, "come back, Klaus. Everything's okay. I'm here."

It had taken a minute, but he'd eventually blinked and focused on her with a soft little shudder, and then looked around like he was rediscovering where he was.

At which point he'd insisted that he was fine but also that he had to go and 'run an errand,' so Vanya had kept a grip on his hand and pulled him into the closest available coffee shop instead. And then she'd used the pay phone inside the shop to call Diego's gym.

Luther and Diego arrived at the coffee shop inside of ten minutes. Klaus was clutching an untouched mug of coffee with two hands, staring vacantly into its depths. Vanya greeted her two largest brothers with relief, and the three of them escorted Klaus back to Vanya's apartment without further incident.

When Dave arrived back from his shift at the hardware store, the four of them were in Vanya's living room, playing Scrabble.

Crisis averted.

* * *

After his first paycheck came in, Dave got his own apartment.

It was a one-room bachelor pad, which was all he could afford. (In fact, he _couldn't_ quite afford it if he also budgeted for groceries—but most days' dinners were takeout eaten communally with the Hargreeves, and Allison always picked up the tab.) It was only half a block from Vanya's place, and it finally got Dave and Klaus out of Vanya's bed.

Furnishing the place with Klaus was a kind of domestic fun that Dave had never dreamed might be in the cards for a guy like him. Allison made them a housewarming gift of a bedroom set, which they picked out together at a giant, overwhelming store called "Ikea". ("Are there a lot of Swedish immigrants in this neighborhood?" Dave had asked, still trying to get a handle on the demographics of the future.)

Their landlord surprised them by knocking at their door bearing a 'welcome' casserole on the second night. Dave tensed, trying instinctively and futilely to block her line of sight to the single queen-sized bed, the two toothbrushes in the cup over by the sink.

Klaus smiled and accepted the casserole and kissed her cheek.

"And you two let me know right away if there are any problems with the place," she said. "Regular business hours for the routine stuff, but call day or night if there's a plumbing emergency."

"Did she realize that we're—?" Dave trailed off uncomfortably, staring at the door after she had gone.

"In a loving, committed same-sex partnership?" Klaus finished for him, setting the casserole in the oven to warm up. "Yes, sweetie, I'm pretty sure she did." He went over and flung his arms around Dave from behind, giving him a comforting embrace. "The 1950s really did a number on you, didn't they?"

"I've gotten used to your siblings accepting us," Dave said. "I'm still not ready to expect it from anybody else."

"Some things take time," Klaus said, nuzzling his neck. "I'll make you into an out-and-proud gay man eventually, don't worry. Quickie before dinner?"

* * *

Allison moved into her new house. Five didn't officially move in with her, per se, but he claimed one of her guest rooms as his home base.

Luther, on the other hand, moved back into the boxing gym's boiler room with Diego (bringing in a mattress to put on the floor next to the cot).

"So it looks like Allison and Luther aren't going to go all Flowers-In-The-Attic on us after all," Klaus said to Dave when they were alone in their own apartment.

Klaus was sprawled on the bed, painting his fingernails midnight blue. Dave was sitting at the little work desk he'd set up, experimenting with logic gates. He'd decided to pick up his old hobby of fiddling with electronics. He'd had some ideas he'd been working on back in 1975, and as far as he could tell nobody had jumped the gun on him in forty-four years. There'd been surprisingly little change in the field.

"What was that about flowers?" Dave asked. He was used to having to ask for footnotes. He figured he'd get caught up eventually—give him a decade, maybe.

So Klaus explained the reference, archly.

"Oh, huh," Dave said, twisting wires together carefully. "I wonder if they actually dated in that other timeline that Eudora remembers? Like you and Diego."

"What?!" Klaus exclaimed, sitting bolt upright. 

"Oops," Dave blinked, realizing that he'd just spilled the beans. He'd forgotten that Klaus hadn't been around when Eudora had revealed the fact.

"Diego and I _dated_?!" Klaus fumbled the nail-polish bottle and nearly spilled it. "Ew," he said. "And HA! But also ew. Does Diego know about this?"

"Yeah, Eudora told us before she knew that there _was_ a different timeline," Dave explained. "She's been discreet about it since then. I don't think anybody else knows."

"That is hilarious," Klaus said. "And also gross. But mostly hilarious. I am _so_ throwing this in Diego's face at the worst possible moment."

"You should be nice to your siblings," Dave chided him. "They've really been going out of their way to look out for you."

"Sure, sure," Klaus said. "But come on. This is comedy gold!"

* * *

Another month passed. Dave took a driving test, borrowing Diego's car, and got his license. He started making deliveries for the hardware store sometimes.

Klaus was as relaxed and healthy as Dave had ever seen him. Okay, considering that before this he'd only known Klaus when he was drug-addicted in a war zone, maybe that wasn't a high bar. But the siblings commented on it, too. General opinion seemed to credit Dave with the change, but Dave knew that it was a team effort, and that Klaus himself was putting in a hell of a lot of work for it.

Dave did worry, a bit, about what might happen when the crutch of the siblings' constant attendance was withdrawn. Klaus had literally never been left alone since the day he'd disappeared while getting milk. There had only been three explicitly averted crises that Dave knew of—that time with the fire trucks, another jackhammer incident, and a day when something had happened with some ghosts—but Dave suspected that the grounding effect of his siblings' company kept Klaus away from dark places, just in general.

"No, don't worry," Allison said to Dave when he mentioned his concerns out loud to her one day. "We can keep doing this till we're so old that none of us goes out anyway."

Dave shook his head, still fretting. "It's a lot to ask."

"Actually, I think it's good for us," Allison said. "If we didn't have this going on, I think we might have all spun away from each other again by now. Our natural tendency is to scatter. Klaus is keeping us together. And that means the rest of us are there for each other, too."

"No moon-blowing-up," Dave said with a comprehending nod.

Allison smiled. "Exactly."

* * *

Eudora trailed Diego to dinner at Vanya's one night. She was quiet through the meal. At the end, when they were eating their fortune cookies and making 'in bed' jokes (which Diego and Klaus found particularly hilarious; Five's eyes looked like they were going to roll right out of his head), Eudora turned to Klaus and said quietly, "You can see ghosts, right?"

"Ah, yeah," Klaus said, looking suddenly cautious.

"And talk with them?"

"That's me, Number Four, the Séance," he said, giving a patently fake smile. "Collect all six." Then he caught himself. "Actually, I guess in this timeline we never had action figures."

"Action figures?" Dave asked, but meanwhile Eudora was continuing,

" _Any_ ghosts? Could you search out a particular one to talk to?"

Now Klaus looked _really_ cautious. "Depends. Why?"

"There's a murder case that we can't crack."

Diego frowned. "Is _this_ why you asked to come to dinner?"

"The victim was a little girl," Eudora continued. "Twelve years old."

"Ah," Klaus said softly, rocking back and tucking his hands around his knees. (As usual, they were eating picnic-style on Vanya's living room floor.) "Long black hair, pigtails? Asian?—" he paused, staring into empty air for a moment, "sorry about that, half Korean and half French?"

Eudora's eyes widened. "Yes," she breathed. "How did you know?"

"Oh, she's been following you around like a lost puppy."

"Klaus," Eudora said, rising up on her knees and staring at him intently. "Can you tell me who killed her?"

Klaus cocked his head for a moment, listening to nothing. "It was the mother's ex-boyfriend," he said after a bit. "Marcus."

"Oh," Eudora let out a soft breath. "He was on our list. But we didn't have any evidence to tie him to her."

"You still don't," Diego pointed out, shooting a worried look between her and Klaus.

"Klaus, can I ask her some questions?" Eudora asked. "We never found where she was killed—the body had been moved. If I could just find the site, there could be evidence there that would point to Marcus..."

"Yeah," Klaus said, in that soft, breathy voice he used when he was distressed but choosing to be flippant about it. "She'll answer your questions if she can. She's not sure where he took her, though."

"Okay, okay." Eudora patted her pockets and came up with a notebook. "Ah—Klaus, where is she? Where should I look?"

Klaus looked at Eudora, and then at empty space. He pressed his lips together, and then said, "Vanya? Do you have something like a teddy bear?"

Vanya shook her head. "No. No, I don't own anything like that."

Klaus looked around and then waved at the couch. "Pass me that throw cushion."

Luther, who was nearest, plucked the cushion from the couch and tossed it to Klaus.

Klaus put the cushion down in the empty space in front of the fireplace. "Sit yourself there, Éloïse," he said. "The nice cop lady has some questions for you."

And then, while Dave and the Hargreeves siblings watched quietly, Klaus held a séance for Eudora.

Eudora was obviously struggling with the strangeness of the situation at first, but soon her voice steadied into a compassionate-yet-professional tone that Dave imagined she might use to question a living child who was a witness to a crime.

The questions were detailed and specific. Each time, there was a pause, and then Klaus gave an answer.

Finally, Eudora closed her notebook. "Thank you," she said. "With this, I know I can find the physical evidence. I have to go now. I have to follow up on this."

"Is it okay if she goes, too?" Klaus asked, using his soft voice.

"With me?" Eudora asked, looking a little worried.

"No—is it okay if she _goes_. To the other side. Now that she's answered your questions, she's tired, and she doesn't feel like she needs to stay here anymore. And I can send her away. But she doesn't want to go if you might still need her help."

Now Eudora looked very daunted, but she swallowed and said, "That would be all right." She looked at the pillow. "You can go if you want to, Éloïse. I've got what I need. Thank you very much for the help."

"All right." Klaus closed his eyes, and tensed. He inhaled, and then didn't exhale for a good thirty seconds. Dave found himself holding his breath too, not knowing why.

And then Klaus exhaled, and opened his eyes. "Okay," he said softly. "She's gone."

On the other side of the room, Allison gave a little sob and leaned against Luther.

"Thank you, Klaus," Eudora said, standing up. Her voice was a little unsteady.

"Oh, I owed you one," he said, looking up at her with wide eyes. "You got killed saving my life."

She blinked. "Huh?"

"The other timeline," Diego said, scraping the edge of a knife along his leather-clad thigh and avoiding eye contact.

"Oh my God," she said, looking at him and at Klaus.

"Go," Klaus said. "You should go now. Please."

Eudora gave a tight nod, tucked her notebook into her pocket, and left.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Klaus looked around and said, "She's gone! You should all leave now too, okay? Get out of here!"

"Uh, you mean us?" Luther asked.

Vanya wrinkled her nose in a frown. "I live here."

"Not _you_ guys," Klaus said. "The _rest_ of them. Oh, fuck." His gaze raked the room again, not exactly settling on any of his siblings.

"Klaus, honey?" Dave said, resting a hand lightly on his arm. "What's going on?"

"News travels fast in ghost-ville," Klaus said, his eyes still darting around wildly. "There are an _awful_ lot of ghosts who would like their murders solved."

"There are more ghosts in the room?" Vanya asked, looking around as though maybe she'd see something.

"They've been piling in for the past ten minutes," Klaus said. "Fuck. Go away!" he waved his arms. "She's gone! I can't do anything for you!"

"Uh, maybe _we_ should leave," Dave suggested, giving Klaus's arm a gentle tug. Klaus was starting to look a little wild.

"No, they're going to follow _me_ now," Klaus said. "I have something they want. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." He curled down into a ball, putting his arms over his head.

"I thought you were handling the ghosts okay now," Vanya said, looking worried.

"By _ignoring_ them," Klaus said from his huddle. "If I didn't react to them, they didn't know I could see them."

"But you can also dismiss them, right?" Luther said. "Like you just did."

"Not so many at _once_ ," Klaus said.

"Are we in danger?" Allison asked. 

Diego looked uneasy. "Remember that ghost with the money who nearly choked him?"

"I think that can only happen if he deliberately feeds some power to the ghost," Five said, but he looked concerned too. "Klaus, the ghosts aren't about to start _manifesting_ , are they?"

"Go AWAY!" Klaus shouted at the air, peeking out of his huddle. "All of you, GO AWAY!" And then he curled up again, rocking and swearing.

"Should we be doing something?" Vanya asked. She looked at Dave. "Have you seen him get like this before?"

Dave shook his head. He was focused on Klaus, and getting scared. "Honey, try to calm down and tell us what's happening. Maybe we can help."

"Help, help," Klaus repeated, looking up. His eyes had gone a little bloodshot. "Yes! Vanya, you must have some liquor." He sprang to his feet and ran towards the kitchen, skittering side to side like he was avoiding non-existent obstacles.

Well, maybe just invisible obstacles.

"I don't," Vanya said conversationally. She looked at Dave, and her siblings. "Even before we were trying to keep Klaus sober, that isn't something I kept in my house."

Cupboard doors were opening and slamming shut in the kitchen. And then Klaus flew back through, making for the front door.

"Wait!" Dave said, catching at him. "That's not a good solution."

"It's the _only_ solution," Klaus said, wild-eyed.

"No, let's just sit down and—" before he got to the end of the sentence, he was tumbling to the floor. Klaus had _thrown_ him.

He heard the door opening and multiple feet running. By the time he'd found his own feet again, Luther was carrying a wildly flailing Klaus back into the apartment.

"Klaus, _stop_ it," Luther said, sounding a little annoyed but not overexerted. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Let me go, let me go, I have to turn them off, _please_ , fucking please, let me go," Klaus begged and sobbed, thrashing in Luther's grip.

"Have you got him okay?" Diego asked Luther, edging up close.

"Yeah, I can hold him no problem," Luther said. "But what are we going to do about this?"

"No, I can't help you, please, you're scaring me, fuck, get off me, let go of me, fuck," and then Klaus screamed.

"Jesus," Allison said, flinching and putting her hands to her ears.

Klaus's scream trailed off into sobs, and then ramped up into another scream.

"Honey, please, what's happening, you have to calm down," Dave said desperately.

"Um, I'm a little worried that my neighbors might call the police," Vanya mentioned with an uncomfortable look around.

"Okay, is he having a mental breakdown, or is he being attacked by ghosts?" Five asked.

"Both, I think," Diego said.

"Guys?!" Dave said, tapping his own upper lip to draw their attention to Klaus's, where a trickle of blood was now running down from his nose. Dave's ears were ringing from Klaus's screams.

Allison straightened her shoulders and stepped in decisively. "I heard a rumor," she said, leaning over Klaus, "that you fell asleep."

The reaction was instant. Klaus went limp in Luther's arms.

"Oh my God," Vanya said in half-whisper.

"Nice work," Five said, patting Allison's elbow.

"I'm not so sure about that," Allison said, looking a little pale. "That right there is how I blew up my life."

"Huh?" Luther said.

"I rumored Claire to sleep."

Vanya let out a sharp, startled laugh.

"It's not funny," Allison said.

"No, it really isn't," Vanya said. "But I was a nanny for a month, and oh my God some nights if I'd had access to a mind-control power..." She shook her head, and looked at Luther. "Let's put him on my bed."

* * *

Once Luther had gently deposited Klaus on the bed, they all stood around awkwardly for a moment, staring at him.

The nosebleed had stopped. He looked peaceful.

"So, should we—" Luther started.

Allison _shhh!_ 'd him with a quick finger to her lips. "He's just asleep," she whispered. "He'll wake up if we're too loud."

Luther nodded, and then with a clumsy series of hand gestures managed to indicate that he was going to go back to the living room. Diego and Five followed him. Allison touched Dave's arm.

"We need to talk about this," she whispered. "He'll be okay for now."

Dave was reluctant to leave Klaus, but he saw her point about the need for discussion. "We leave the door open," he whispered, and she nodded.

On their way out, Vanya went to turn off the bedroom light, but Dave stopped her. "We sleep with the lights on. Klaus hates the dark."

* * *

"Okay, what the hell was that?" Five said, looking around at everybody.

They'd cleaned the remains of dinner off the floor and pushed the furniture back into position. Five was sitting perched on one arm of the couch.

"I think Klaus was pretty clear," Diego said, spinning his knife. "Eudora's stupid detective trick triggered a ghost-pocalypse."

"Are you mad at her?" Vanya asked, sounding puzzled. "She had a pretty good reason for it, I thought."

"Diego thought she came to dinner to spend time with _him_ ," Allison inferred with a sideways glance.

"But the ghosts couldn't hurt Klaus, right?" Five persisted. "There wasn't really any threat?"

"I don't think any of us actually understands Klaus's powers very well," Luther said. "Including him."

"He's scared of the ghosts," Diego said. "He always has been. We know _that_."

"But he's been doing so much better," Allison said.

"Has he?" Luther asked, looking directly at Dave.

"I think so," Dave said. "I mean, yeah. For sure. He's been tolerating them without getting high. He doesn't talk about them much. I've asked him to tell me when they're around, but he usually doesn't."

"Like the little girl," Vanya said. "It sounded like she was there all through dinner, but he didn't say anything until Eudora asked."

"He told me before that Bernice—the lady with the money—was the only ghost in this apartment," Dave said. "But I guess they can move around."

"The ghosts that attacked him, or scared him, or whatever—will they still be there when he wakes up?" Vanya asked.

Everyone shrugged blankly.

Well, that was a horrible thought.

"If they are," Dave said, "and if Klaus wants to block them out with drugs, I don't want you guys to prevent him."

"What?" Luther said. "Dave, that's a terrible idea."

Dave shook his head, feeling the stares of the siblings. He set his jaw. "It's his choice. The drugs are dangerous, but—more dangerous than what just happened?"

"He's an addict," Diego said. "Dave, if my brother goes down that road again, all bets are off. We can't keep him safe."

"Look, I know about addicts," Dave said. "A lot of guys came back from the war broken, and tried to fix it that way, and the drugs never made it better. But Klaus isn't just trying to run away from bad memories. He is literally haunted by actual ghosts, and the drugs shut that off. We don't have the right to tell him he has to face them. If we do we're no better than your fucking father, locking him in the mausoleum."

"Shit," Allison said. "I see your point. But I really don't like it."

And then Vanya looked up abruptly. "Guys. I think I have an idea."

* * *

Klaus woke up after a couple of hours.

Dave and Vanya were waiting in the bedroom—Dave sitting on the bed next to Klaus, and Vanya in a chair pulled up to the side.

Klaus came awake with a startle and a wild look around.

"Shh, shh, honey, I'm here, look at me," Dave said quickly, hands gripping Klaus's shoulders.

"Oh fuck, Dave," Klaus said, and buried his face against the side of Dave's neck.

"I'm here too," Vanya said—it wasn't clear if Klaus had seen her.

"Honey, can you stay calm and listen to what Vanya has to say?"

Klaus nodded, but kept his face smushed against Dave.

"Dad gave me drugs," Vanya said. "To suppress my powers. Prescription drugs. I was on them for almost my whole life. I didn't know what they were for—I thought they were for anxiety or something." She rattled the bottle in her hand. "I still have them."

Klaus's head popped up like a gopher's, and he made a flailing grab for the pill bottle. "Oh my god fuck Vanya give them to me!"

Vanya kept the bottle away from him with a little frown. "Ah, yes, that's where I was going with this. But I want to let you know what you'd be getting into, first. They don't get you high. But they do affect you. I'd been on them as long as I could remember, so I wasn't conscious of their effects, but when I stopped taking them the whole world got sharper and realer and _better_."

"Sure, fine, let's worry about that later," Klaus said. "Drugs. Now." He looked around the room and shuddered.

"Okay, uh," Vanya looked at the bottle in her hand. "Just take one. It's one every twelve hours. That was enough to keep _my_ powers blocked, so it'll probably do the same for you. I have no idea what an overdose of this stuff would do—please don't find out."

She handed over the bottle to Klaus. He fumbled at it with shaking hands, whimpering.

"Let me," Dave said after a moment, and took it.

And then was unexpectedly stymied. The cap just wouldn't come off.

"It's child-resistant," Vanya said helpfully. "You have to turn it until the slots match."

Dave squinted at the little plastic container and finally saw what Vanya meant. Klaus, meanwhile, had put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Got it," Dave said, shaking a pill out into the palm of his hand. "Klaus, honey?"

Klaus snatched at the pill and crunched it between his teeth.

"Gaaaaah that tastes terrible," he shuddered.

"You're supposed to swallow it whole," Vanya said.

"Wouldn't work as fast that way," Klaus said, and fell back onto the bed. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, fuck they're still here, six, five, never mind these numbers are triggering me, Dave and Vanya could you do something to drown out the ghosts, like, _now_?"

They looked at each other.

"I'll get my violin," Vanya said.

"I'll stay here," Dave said.

* * *

Halfway through the Moonlight Sonata, Klaus relaxed. "It worked," he whispered. "Thank fuck."


	12. Chapter 12

Klaus was different, on Vanya's meds. Dave had to get to know him all over again.

He was calmer, that was one thing. Less reactive. He still smiled, but he didn't laugh very much. There always seemed to be a half-second delay between when you said something to him and when he noticed you were talking.

During the big sibling dinners at Vanya's place, he faded into the background.

"Klaus baby, are you okay?" Allison asked him on something like the fourth day. "You've hardly said a word all night."

Klaus shrugged. "I'm fine." He was slouched against Dave, using him as a back rest.

"It's like he's turning into Vanya," Diego said.

"As long as Vanya doesn't turn into Klaus, we're okay," Luther said.

"When I stopped taking those drugs, it was like ... there'd been a sheer curtain draped around me forever, and it had just been lifted." Vanya looked at Klaus. "Now we've wrapped it around him."

"You were managing all right, though," Allison said. "You'd made it to third violin in a professional orchestra. That's not nothing."

Vanya frowned. "If this is the start of a speech about how what Dad did to me wasn't so bad after all—"

"Oh my God no," Allison broke in. "What he did was inexcusable. I'm just trying to say ... the adjustment might be a little rough. For Klaus. But eventually he can probably live a pretty normal life."

"Allison, did you know you sound condescending as fuck right now?" Diego asked, spinning his knife.

"I'm _fine_ ," Klaus said again. "You all seem a little far away, that's all. But there aren't any ghosts. I just want to rest for a while."

"Klaus is temporarily stable," Five said. "Let's enjoy it while it lasts."

* * *

At home, when it was just the two of them, Klaus was still pretty quiet.

He lay on the bed, eyes open, watching Dave play with his electronics.

The problem Dave was working on was pretty interesting, so he didn't exactly mind the lack of interruptions. The trouble with circuit boards was that as the connections got more complicated, there were a lot more potential failure points. But Dave thought there should be a way to get around it by using a semiconductor and making the resistors, capacitors and transistors out of the same material. 

Time got away from him; it was midnight before he knew it.

He looked over and saw that Klaus was already asleep, lying sideways on top of the bed.

Dave stripped down and then nudged Klaus awake. "Under the covers," he said. "Bedtime."

Klaus mumbled something peacefully incoherent, and semi-helpfully lifted his limbs in sequence while Dave pulled his clothes off of him.

The overhead light was already off; they used the lamp on Dave's work desk as their night light.

"Are you too sleepy?" Dave asked, nibbling a line of kisses down Klaus's jaw.

"For sex? Yeah, I guess," Klaus said, closing his eyes again.

Dave sighed, tucked an arm around Klaus, and snuggled against him—willing his own erection away.

* * *

So. The medication had taken away Klaus's sex drive—stripped it from him so thoroughly that he didn't even miss it.

 _Dave_ missed it. Oh, God. Since he'd come to the future he'd gotten used to having sex with Klaus nearly every day—sometimes more than once.

Dave tried to tell himself that he could live just fine without sex. Up to this point, outside of the ten months in the A Shau with Klaus, Dave had lived a life of situationally-enforced celibacy. One horrible, fumbling hookup in the men's toilets at the back of Oak Ridge Park had convinced him that Dallas was not a place where he'd ever find love.

And it wasn't hard to come back around to thinking that if this was what the rest of their lives were going to be like, Dave would still count it as a blessing. They were so far from Hill 689. So very far from Dave's uncle calling Klaus a queer and making Dave punch him. There was no sex, but Klaus rolled over in Dave's arms and kissed him, and fell asleep with a contented sigh, calm and safe.

* * *

And then at the end of two weeks Klaus turned to Dave and said, "I'm ready to face the ghosts again now."

Dave tried to keep the sheer relief off his face. "Okay," he said.

So Klaus stopped taking the meds. About a day and a half later, on the way home from the grocery store, Klaus veered suddenly to the right, pulling Dave with him, and led them carefully around an empty, featureless stretch of sidewalk.

"Ghost?" Dave guessed.

Klaus looked momentarily surprised, and then looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, oops," he said to the empty sidewalk. "I didn't notice you were dead." He watched the empty space for a moment longer, shrugged, and started walking again.

"Are you okay?" Dave asked, matching Klaus's stride.

"Sure," Klaus said. "Dead businessman. Suit, tie, briefcase. Thinks he's late for a meeting or something. Doesn't care about me."

That evening at home, while Dave experimented with semiconductors, Klaus sat on the bed flipping through an entertainment magazine and keeping up a constant stream of light-hearted chatter. Dave drank it in with quiet delight.

"Oh look, there's a bit about Allison!" Klaus said at one point. "That new shoot she's been on. Shit, her co-star is _hot_."

Dave took the bait—he set down his tools and went over to the bed. "He's okay," he conceded. "A little too square-jawed, clean-cut, tall blond generic white-bread American action hero for me, though. I mean, isn't that a little boring?"

Klaus laughed. "Speak for yourself, sweetie. I _like_ that type." And then he tossed the magazine aside and shoved Dave down on the bed, and straddled him to deliver a series of rough, biting kisses. Dave moaned happily, semiconductors completely forgotten.

The lovemaking that followed was energetic and satisfying. Afterwards, lying naked on the bed together with limbs and sheets all tangled up, Dave said, "I'm so glad to have you back."

And then immediately bit his tongue, because he'd been telling himself over and over that he _wouldn't_ selfishly undermine Klaus's new-found life of peace.

"Yeah," Klaus said, "Vanya's meds made me a little too detached. That's why I stopped taking them."

"Oh," Dave said, torn now between relief and worry. On the one hand, having Klaus back to normal was wonderful. On the other, 'normal' for Klaus was an unstable state, constantly skirting the edge of disaster. "Do you think you'll be okay without them?"

"No," Klaus said immediately. "But I figure I can go on and off them when I need to. I asked Vanya about it, and she said she didn't have any withdrawal when she stopped taking them, even though she'd been on them for decades. So it's probably safe. When the ghosts are too much for me, I'll take a little pill-vacation, and I'll come back when I'm ready." He looked at Dave, suddenly a little uncertain. "If that's okay with you? I mean, I think I wasn't much fun to be around, the past couple of weeks."

Dave's first impulse was to deny it, but he caught himself; he owed Klaus honesty. That was something they'd always promised each other. "It was a little rough," he admitted. "It felt like you were only half here, the whole time. Even when we were together, I missed you. But I want you to be safe. If half of you is what I can get, I'll take it. I lived through seven years of you being _gone_ , and I never want to go through that again."

"Fuck, I love you," Klaus murmured. He blinked suddenly-wet eyes, and sniffled. "You're too good," he added, pressing his forehead against Dave's shoulder. "I don't deserve you."

"I'm a selfish bastard," Dave countered. "You're the best thing that ever happened to me. All I want is to hang on to you."

"Well, that makes two of us," Klaus said, and reached for Dave's cock.

So much for conversation. Or worries, or coherent thought. Dave let the physical sensations overwhelm him, shuddering.

Life was good.

* * *

A period of experimentation followed.

If Klaus swallowed a single pill, the effects kicked in after about an hour, and lasted the better part of a day.

He could accelerate the process by crushing the pill with his teeth before swallowing it, like he had the first time. In that case, his connection to any ghosts would cut off sharply after about three minutes, but the drug would also pretty much knock him out. He wouldn't necessarily go to sleep, but he'd enter a zombie state where he took no initiative—he needed to be actively directed even to put one foot in front of another. The effect would start to taper away after four hours or so.

Taken in that way, the pills apparently tasted horrible. Klaus speculated a few times that he might be better off crushing one to powder with a pestle, mixing it with water, and injecting it intravenously. Dave was leery of that idea, but anyway in practice it never came up. Any time Klaus wanted to take a pill for immediate effect, it was because he'd gotten in over his head with the ghosts and was panicking. At that point he wasn't up for anything more complicated than shoving a pill into his mouth and biting down.

Just knowing that he _could_ escape the ghosts when he needed to seemed to have a calming effect on Klaus. One evening when Dave had a bad headache, Klaus volunteered that they could turn all the lights off.

"Are you sure?" Dave asked, although he was wincing with the pain.

"Uh huh," Klaus said, and pointedly set his pill bottle on the bedside table. "I've got an out if I need it."

So they curled up together in bed in the darkness, and Klaus massaged Dave's scalp and kissed his neck until he fell asleep.

* * *

And then sometimes, Klaus would take the pills as directed for a week or two—one every twelve hours, keeping him in that steady, not-quite-there state.

Dave rode out those periods more easily than he had the first time, knowing they weren't permanent. In some ways Klaus needed more care while he was in that state, and in some ways less. Dave needed to put a lot more energy into their relationship in those weeks, because he was pulling for two; Klaus received Dave's loving gestures with quiet happiness, but rarely offered any of his own. On the other hand, the danger of Klaus going off the rails seemed to be gone, and that was honestly a big relief.

The drugs even damped out Klaus's PTSD. This fact was established via an experiment that Five ran without consulting anybody first.

"What did you and Klaus do today?" Allison asked Five over dinner one night. It had been one of the relatively rare days when Five was slotted to keep Klaus company while Dave was at work. Technically, they could have built the whole schedule without tapping Five at all; while Vanya had her performances to work around and Allison was pretty busy shooting a movie, Luther's and Diego's lives could accommodate a side of Klaus at any time. But Allison insisted on keeping Five involved, and although he grumbled about it, Dave thought that he was secretly content to remain entangled.

"We took in a matinee," Five said. "1917."

"Hey!" Luther said sharply. "We had an agreement—no briefcase use without checking in with the group."

"No, we didn't go to the _year_ 1917," Five rolled his eyes. "That's the name of the movie."

Vanya frowned. "Isn't that a war movie?"

"It's a hyper-realistic, ground-level experience of the battlefields of World War One," Allison said, looking appalled. "Five, what were you _thinking_?"

"I was thinking that Klaus could probably handle loud noises while he's on Vanya's zombie-drugs," Five said. "And I was right. The movie was fine, yeah Klaus?"

"I hated it," Klaus said, looking up from the plate he was picking at. "I felt like I was going to throw up the whole time."

"But you didn't," Five said. "Don't be a pussy."

Dave's first thought was that he wanted to punch Five in his smug face. He managed to suppress the impulse—he wasn't about to attack a skinny teenager half his own size, _or_ for that matter a wily 58-year-old assassin with teleportation abilities.

He reminded himself that Five had never lived a normal life, had spent 45 years alone in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and had seen just as much violence as any of them, if not more.

He was probably as damaged as Klaus was, in his own way.

"I'd appreciate it, Five," Dave managed to say mildly, "if you'd check in with me or Allison before trying something new that might be hard for Klaus." There, that was a reasonable-sounding guideline, right? And he trusted Allison's judgment.

Part of the problem with the meds was that they made Klaus very passive—it sounded like he hadn't wanted to see the movie, but had let Five drag him in anyway.

"Relax, soldier-boy," Five said. "It was a low-risk test. If things had gone pear-shaped, I would have pulled back thirty seconds and whisked Klaus out of the theater."

Dave shook his head. "I don't follow."

"Yeah, Five," Diego said, tilting his head, "what are you talking about?"

"I've been experimenting with my powers," Five said, like it was a casual thing to mention in conversation. "Following up on a little advice that Dad gave me in 1963. Short time jumps backwards are easy to control, and they turn out to be fantastically useful in the right circumstances."

"And this is something you've been working on in secret?" Luther asked, looking worried.

"You make it sound so furtive," Five said. "Thing is, it's inherently impossible for any of you to notice when I do it. I did it _tonight_ , when Luther spilled the hot-and-sour soup."

"Huh?" Luther said. "I didn't spill the soup."

"Not in _this_ timeline, you didn't."

"Five," Allison said, sitting up straight, "I have concerns about this."

"Why?" Five asked. "Don't you prefer eating delicious soup instead of mopping it up off the floor?"

"Well, it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that you might be manipulating the events in our lives without us even knowing it," Allison said. "That sounds a little too much like _my_ power. Which I don't use, remember, because it's a horrifying violation of another person's autonomy."

"It's time travel, not mind control," Five said, leaning in. "Nobody does anything they wouldn't do anyway. All I can do is change my own choices. I handed the bag with the soup to Diego."

Diego shrugged. "Sounds harmless."

Vanya frowned. "I'm with Allison—this makes me uneasy. I don't like not knowing what's really happening."

"But you do," Five said. "The soup thing doesn't matter. The soup didn't spill." He looked around, frustrated. "Guys, I'd only do it to protect you."

"From spilled soup?" Luther said.

"And other things."

"Maybe you could get in the habit of _telling_ us," Dave suggested. "When you've done it."

"But I'd sound like a crazy person," Five countered. "The events would never seem real to the rest of you."

"And this family doesn't have any experience with that kind of thing," Klaus said. "Oh wait, you _did_ all treat me like a crazy person."

"Sorry," Luther shrugged.

"In my defense, I mostly wasn't even there," Five pointed out.

"Five, _have_ you been changing things very much?" Vanya asked. "I mean ... what kind of stuff do you change?"

Five looked around. Scowled. Hunched his shoulders and tucked his arms around his knees. "You all died in Sissy's barn."

"No we didn't," Luther protested, blinking.

Sissy had been Vanya's lover in the past, Dave remembered. Five was talking about an event from 1963.

"Yes we did," Allison said slowly, staring at Five. "That's what Five's telling us. And then you ... undid it?"

"The Handler came in with a machine gun and mowed us all down without warning," Five said, hugging his knees tight. "I took a couple in the gut and I fell down, but I didn't pass out right away. Lived long enough to see the Swede come in and take _her_ out mid-gloat. Then he turned the barrel on me, and it would have been the end, except the old man's words came back to me. It was a Hail Mary, could have gone disastrously wrong, but what did I have to lose at that point? So I focused my power and just started walking the seconds back. It was easy, in the end."

"I wondered how you got there in time to stop her coming in the barn," Diego mused. "Figured you must've been lucky, standing at just the right angle to catch a glimpse as she walked up."

"So you saw us all die," Allison said to Five. "And you didn't say anything."

Five shrugged, chin on his knees. "Once it un-happened, what was there to say?"

"You still have to carry the memory," Allison pointed out. "Like Klaus and Dave remembering each others' deaths."

"Well, in my case the trauma only lasted about sixty seconds," Five said. "And then you were all fine again." But he was still clutching his knees.

"I think Five needs a hug," Klaus whispered to Dave.

"Klaus thinks you should all hug Five," Dave said out loud.

"Oh, come on," Five groaned.

But obviously he was into it. Because the last of the soup actually got spilled as the siblings piled on him murmuring jokes and love, and Five didn't even walk time backwards to avoid it.


	13. Chapter 13

A tiny noise woke Dave up. Or maybe it was a little movement.

In any case, his eyes opened to a flashing blade, and he rolled to the side fast enough to avoid it.

"Shit!" said a woman's voice, weirdly muffled. "You idiots woke him up."

Dave was rolling off the side of the bed, scrambling to his feet. A distorted rubber face was looming over him, some kind of cat. A cat with a machete.

It seemed likely that this was a nightmare, but he didn't stop to double-check. He ducked sideways and inwards like they'd taught him in Basic, and tried to shoulder-check the cat.

The cat danced backwards, avoiding him, and he stumbled. Then she—the cat had a feminine body—swung the machete at him in a wide arc, and he barely managed to spin out of the way.

The spin gave him the chance to see the bed. Klaus was pinned by two more masked invaders—a parrot and a hamster, it looked like. Klaus's eyes were open, and the parrot had a hand clamped over his mouth. He was struggling ineffectively.

"Do you need some help?" the hamster asked politely. Presumably addressing the cat.

"Don't patronize me," the cat said, backing away from Dave a little, balancing lightly on the balls of her feet. "If you think I can't handle one naked, sleepy man—" she slashed the machete at Dave, nicking the arm that he instinctively brought up to protect himself as he fled backwards—"you might as well just ask for a new partner, hey?"

"Oh, don't get like that," said the parrot. "You know we respect you."

Dave felt the kitchen counter behind himself. Before he could get pinned, he flailed his hand along the surface seeking a weapon. He would've loved to find a knife, but he came up with tongs.

"Nice!" the cat said, apparently appreciating his efforts. "This'll be fun." She slapped at the tongs a couple of times with the flat of the machete as Dave desperately scrambled backwards yet again.

And then the hamster said "What the _hell_?" and Dave instinctively looked in that direction—which easily could have cost him his life, except that the cat was caught by the same distraction.

Klaus's fists were glowing a flickering blue.

And then two new forms appeared next to the bed, matrices of flickering blue lights in the shape of people.

One of them grabbed the parrot from behind, the other one grabbed the hamster.

The ghost-forms—they _were_ ghosts, they had to be, but Dave had never _seen_ one before—pulled the parrot and the hamster away from Klaus. Klaus came up onto his knees on the bed, glowing hands thrust out in front of him. His eyes were glowing white, like when Vanya used her power.

The cat, meanwhile, had rallied. She raised the machete and started a swing that was going to cleave Dave's throat.

Klaus motioned with his hand. One of the ghosts dropped its charge and screamed across the room like an evil wind, right _into_ the cat.

The cat dropped the machete with a clatter. She went up on tiptoe, rigid, and shrieked. And then she tumbled down like a marionette with cut strings. When she fell, the ghost was still standing in the place where she'd been.

"Forget the target!" the parrot yelled at the hamster. "Take out the guy with the glowing hands!" And then the ghost holding the parrot braced a transparent blue hand on either side of the parrot's head, and twisted. There was no change of expression on the rubber mask's face, but the crunching bone sound let Dave know that underneath, a human neck had broken.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck," the hamster said. "I do not get paid enough for this." He turned and ran for the door.

The ghosts didn't stop him.

The door slammed shut behind the hamster.

Klaus made a little gesture with his hands, and the ghosts disappeared. A moment later, Klaus crumpled down in a splayed heap on the bed.

Dave stared around the room dumbly for about ten seconds. The cat and the parrot both lay where they'd fallen, still in the way that only the dead were.

He ran to the bed, to Klaus. "What just happened?! Are you okay?!"

"Sh-sure," Klaus stuttered through chattering teeth. He was shaking as though he had malaria. "G-glad I w-wasn't taking V-Vanya's meds this w-week."

Before Dave could say anything else, there was a swoosh-pop behind him. He spun around, heart in his throat, raising his hands to defend himself and Klaus against whoever attacked them next.

The red-booted woman who'd pulled him out of 1975 stood in the middle of the room holding a thick briefcase. Her jet-black hair was in a buzz cut now, and she had several silver studs in each ear. She looked around. "Oh, oops, I see I'm a little late," she said. "Sorry about that. Need help with the cleanup?"

" _Lila_?" Dave managed to choke out. "What the hell is going on here?"

She pursed her lips. "Oh, look at you. You're naked and bleeding."

Dave only noticed the sting in his arm when he followed her gaze to it. During the fight he'd registered it as a barely-there nick, but now he saw that the cut was dripping blood.

That was hardly his most pressing concern right now, though. "Klaus," he said, turning back to his trembling lover. "Talk to me, honey. Are you okay? Are the ghosts still here?"

"Th-they left," Klaus said. "F-freaks them out when I push them around like that."

"You're shaking," Dave told him. "Look at me—" because Klaus's attention was still tracking randomly all over the room, "can you calm down?"

"N-not panicking," Klaus promised him, finally managing to hold Dave's gaze for a moment. "Th-this is physical. That ghost trick t-takes a lot out of m-me."

"So, by the way," Lila said, "What happened to the third one?"

"The third what?" Dave asked dumbly.

"He r-ran," Klaus said.

"Uh oh," Lila said. "We probably shouldn't dilly-dally, in that case. I don't know _where_ I'm going to take you, though. I could've sworn you'd be safe in 2019. I've never heard of the Commission sending assassins anywhere past April 1st. The whole timeline's a blank slate from here on out."

"Me," Dave said suddenly, as the whole wild confusing event started to settle into a coherent story in his head. "Those were Commission assassins. They came for me. They called me the target."

"Uh, yeah," Lila said. "And I'm here to save you. Again. Er, that was the plan anyway." She looked pointedly at the dead bodies. "Nice work, though."

"That was all Klaus," Dave admitted.

"Do you want to try Easter Island, this time?" Lila asked.

Dave shook his head and took a step back away from her, just to be safe. He knew what the briefcases were now. "Vanya's," he said. "We're going to Vanya's. We can walk there. It's just up the block."

"Vanya—Diego's sister? The one who blew up, variously, the moon, the FBI building, and the farm?" Lila shrugged. "Yeah, I guess you'll be safe from the Commission if you're with her."

"B-better call first," Klaus said. "It's the m-middle of the night."

Dave strode over to the phone on the wall in the kitchen nook. "We're going to Vanya's," he said. "And we're calling a family meeting. And Lila—you're coming too."

* * *

Lila pouted about the plan, but she didn't use the briefcase to time-travel away.

Dave quickly bandaged his arm and pulled on clothes, and dressed Klaus too. Klaus couldn't quite stand up on his own, so Lila and Dave propped him between them, one arm slung over each of their shoulders.

"How long before you can walk?" Dave asked as they headed out the door, leaving the bodies in the apartment for now.

"D-dunno," Klaus said, still shivering violently. "H-haven't done this v-very often."

"How far are we going, exactly?" Lila asked. "I'm sorry, but he's heavier than he looks."

"It's seriously only about 500 feet," Dave promised. "And Vanya said she'll meet us on the street."

It was about three in the morning. The street wasn't quite deserted, but it was close. There was no sign of the hamster—but then, if he'd taken his mask off and shed his jacket, he could be practically anyone.

Klaus stumbled along, balanced between them. His shivering already seemed less intense, so that was encouraging.

And then suddenly, Lila halted cold in her tracks. Since the three of them were linked together by Klaus, they all stopped.

"Mum?" Lila said in a broken, little-girl voice.

"Oh, boy, this is awkward," Klaus said. "Lila, are you copying my power involuntarily, or can you stop?"

"You were killed," Lila said to the empty space in front of them.

"Yes, she was, she's a ghost, you're duplicating my _ghost_ powers," Klaus said.

Lila whimpered.

"Don't listen to her," Klaus said. "Ghosts can be so mean. And frankly, I think you look _hot_ with that haircut. Butch suits you."

"She's really here?" Lila asked, turning to Klaus. "You can see her?"

"She's a ghost. I can see her because I see ghosts. It's my power. Which you're currently replicating. Lila, can you stop doing that? I really think you'll be happier if you stop."

"I can't," Lila said, sounding more than a little distressed.

"If we get to Vanya's place, can you copy hers instead?" Klaus asked.

"Y-yes," Lila confirmed.

"Let's go, then."

Lila still hesitated.

"Just walk through her," Klaus advised. "She can't do anything to you."

Lila squeezed her eyes shut, scrunched up her nose, and bounded forward. Dave managed to match her stride so that they didn't fall down or drop Klaus.

"Oh my God," Lila gasped. "That was weird."

"Just keep walking," Klaus advised, and glanced back over his shoulder. "I'll try to send her away for you."

"Wait—" Dave said. "Are you sure it's a good idea to send Lila's mother to the _other side_?" His voice cracked a little at the end. Things with Klaus and the Hargreeves got weird sometimes, sure, but tonight was really out there. "What if Lila wants to talk to her later?"

"Oh, she won't go _away_ away," Klaus said. "Not unless she wants to, like Éloïse and Bernice did."

"Who?" Lila said.

"A couple of other ghosts that we've met," Dave said. Which probably didn't actually sound crazy to Lila at all, considering the circumstances.

"Oh shit that man only has half a face," Lila said, looking towards a mailbox where nobody was standing.

Klaus didn't say anything; he looked like he was concentrating on something.

"Dave, do you see that boy with the hat?" Lila asked, pointing with her briefcase hand in the direction of an empty door stoop.

"No," Dave said.

Klaus sagged suddenly. Dave caught him in both arms before he dropped.

Lila looked backwards. "He did it," she said. "Mum is gone."

"He's passed out," Dave told her.

"Shit," Lila said, spinning around, eyes wide. "Not to alarm you, David J. Katz, but we are freakin' surrounded by ghosts." She seemed to be on the edge of hyperventilating.

Dave scooped Klaus up in his arms. He needed Lila to calm down; he couldn't carry both of them. "Try to ignore them," he advised her, thinking about the information Klaus had imparted about the mechanics of ghosts over their months together. "They can't hurt you unless you do something specific to give them power."

"Do _what_?" Lila asked, her voice rising. "I don't know how this power works!"

"Oh look, there's Vanya," Dave said with intense relief, looking just up the street. "See her there, on the sidewalk?"

"I don't know, there's too many ghosts in the way," Lila whimpered.

"Okay, come on." Dave didn't have a hand free to take her arm, so he just strode forward and hoped she'd follow. She did, sticking close to his side and looking around herself wildly.

A moment later, Vanya obviously spotted them, and she ran forward to meet them. "Oh my God, what happened to Klaus?" she demanded.

"He did one too many ghost things, and he fainted," Dave said. "I think he'll be okay. Let's get inside."

"Vanya," Lila said, catching at her arm. "Use your power."

Vanya looked at her. "Huh?"

"Something small. Please, just do it."

"She caught Klaus's ghost-sight," Dave explained. "She's freaking out a little." Not that anybody had exactly stopped to explain to Dave how that all worked, but he thought he'd managed to infer the basics. "I think she needs you to use your power so that she can switch over to copying it instead."

Vanya wrinkled her nose. "I'm not so sure that's a great idea. The last time she copied my power, she nearly killed us all."

"Oh," Dave said, looking at Lila, who was biting her nails and seemed near tears. "Nobody told me about that. But, uh, she saved my life, back in 1975. And I think she came here to save me again tonight. She was a little late, though."

"Okay," Vanya said, after a thoughtful pause. "But let's get inside first."

Dave was happy with that part of the plan; Klaus was still unconscious, and he was getting damn heavy.

So they went into Vanya's apartment. Dave laid Klaus down on the couch, and Lila tucked herself into the armchair, rocking and whimpering.

"I'm just going to push that pencil across the coffee table," Vanya said.

Dave, meanwhile, was checking Klaus's pulse. It seemed okay.

A stationary pencil suddenly rolled off the coffee table of its own accord.

"Aaaaaaahhhhh," Lila said. "That's better." She shuddered. "I am never copying that freak's powers again. _Seeing ghosts_? What kind of a sorry excuse for a superpower is that, anyway?"

"Well, he did use it to fight off three Commission assassins, just now," Dave pointed out loyally. And spared an uncomfortable thought for the two dead bodies in his apartment. They were going to have to do something about that.

"Okay, I grant you its utility," Lila said. "But is it worth it? Walking through the world of the dead all the time. How does he cope without going mad?"

Vanya quirked an eyebrow, looking at her unconscious brother. "Historically," she said, "he takes a lot of drugs."

* * *

Klaus woke up about a minute later. He was a little shaky but otherwise seemed unharmed. He asked for a glass of warm water, which Dave quickly fetched.

Allison and Five arrived soon after, full of questions. All Vanya had told them on the phone was that Dave and Klaus had been attacked and that they were all right. They were surprised to see Lila, and Five in particular seemed very suspicious of her.

So Dave launched into the story of his night so far, with interjections from Klaus and Lila. He'd just got up to the part where the ghost killed the assassin in the cat mask, when the door opened again and Luther and Diego walked in.

"Lila," Diego said, stopping cold.

"Diego," she returned, her tone somewhere indistinct between warm and mocking.

"How long's it been for you now?" he asked.

"About a year, give or take," she said. "You?"

"Four months. You ready to talk yet?"

She waved a hand around the room, indicating Dave and all the siblings. "Apparently it's happening whether I'm ready or not."

Diego nodded. Hesitated, then said, "I missed you, Lila. It's good to see you."

"That remains to be determined," Five editorialized in an undertone.

" _Why_ is Lila here?" Luther asked.

And so Dave started the story again from the top.

By the time he got to the end, the siblings were sprawled around the room in something approximating their usual positions. Dave and Klaus on the couch, hands on each others' knees. Five perched up on the arm. Vanya in her armchair, Luther and Allison in other chairs pulled in around the coffee table. Diego over by the fireplace.

And Lila was standing next to Diego. Arms crossed in front of her and not quite touching him with her elbow; sneaking fond looks sideways at him every few seconds.

Nobody had ever actually told Dave anything about Lila, and he'd never thought to ask—which was funny, maybe, since she was the one who'd brought him here from 1975 in the first place. But from what he'd picked up so far tonight, he felt pretty confident guessing that she had a very different relationship with Diego than with the rest of the siblings.

"Okay, I'm still not sure I get the Lila part," Luther said finally when Dave got to the part of the story where they all met up. "She followed the Commission goons?"

"I arrived separately," Lila said. "I've got a source in the Commission. Feeds me target information. I show up and intervene."

"This is what you're doing, now?" Diego asked. "A vendetta against the Commission?"

"No," she rolled her eyes. "I'm not hurting the Commission at all. Its work is too important. You'd know that if you'd watched all the way through the orientation film. But I don't like the way that it _kills_ people. There are other ways to protect history."

"When you saved me in 1975," Dave recalled, "you said you could put me somewhere out-of-the-way. And then you brought me here."

"Exactly."

"So you're doing this out of the goodness of your heart?" Allison asked. She sounded skeptical, and a bit hostile. Dave remembered Vanya mentioning that Lila had nearly killed them all at some point in the past. "Charity work?"

"Call it a vocation," Lila said. Somehow she'd taken possession of one of Diego's knives, and she was spinning it just the way he usually did. "It's just something I've got to do."

"A Commission assassin killed her parents, remember," Five said. "When she was four years old."

"Yeah," Lila said, giving Five a dark look. "He sure did."

"Five was the assassin," Klaus whispered to Dave.

The whisper clearly carried to every corner of the quiet room. Everybody looked at him.

"What?" Klaus said. "We were all there when you talked about it. It's only fair that Dave gets to know too. He's all wrapped up in this."

"Lila," Dave said quickly, " _thank you_. For saving my life, for bringing me here—it's the most amazing gift anyone's ever given me."

"Oh, well, no worries," she said, fidgeting a little bashfully. "It wasn't any kind of big deal. I usually manage two or three a day."

"Is Dave still in danger?" Luther asked. "I mean, the Commission's apparently come after him twice now."

"Yeah, that is a bit of a puzzle," Lila said, looking thoughtful. "I _swear_ , I thought he would be safe here. Post April 1st 2019, there's no canonical timeline to protect. I've never _heard_ of an agent getting sent on a mission this far ahead in history."

"Neither have I," Five agreed.

"When my source sent me a copy of the kill order for Dave here this time, I thought it was a typo," Lila went on. "I only decided to come because I recognized the name."

Vanya raised her hand. "I think we should try to find out what's going on. It sounds like Dave's not out of danger."

"All right," Five said. "We've got two briefcases and two former Commission agents."

"Three," Diego said.

"Two point zero zero one," Five conceded. "Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to infiltrate the Commission and find out why they keep putting out kill orders for Dave."

"Are you thinking Infinite Switchboard?" Diego asked. "'Cause I'm familiar with that puppy."

Five rolled his eyes. "I was thinking more along the lines of the file room. If we could get hold of the original paperwork, we can find out what kind of timeline disruption Dave is supposedly causing."

"Oh, well, that's easy," Lila said. "I have the file numbers." She hefted her briefcase, and swoosh-popped out of existence.

Five sighed. "She's not really a team player, is she?"

"You could back up thirty seconds and stop her from doing that," Diego pointed out.

"Technically, yes, but I'm not sure if that's the best—"

Swoosh-pop. Lila was back.

"Never mind," Five said. "No need."

Lila held up a couple of pieces of paper. "Here we go. Order 27980, the one targeting him in 1975, and order 28663, the one for tonight." She frowned down at the papers. "All it says under 'cause' is 'Protocol One'." She flipped back and forth between the two sheets. "Same thing on both of them."

"What's Protocol One?" Klaus asked, wrapping an arm around Dave's shoulders as though he could protect him that way.

"I don't know," Lila said.

"Me neither," Five agreed, looking puzzled.

"Never heard of it," Diego chimed in, earning eye rolls from both Lila and Five. "Why don't we ask Herb?"

"Oh, Herb's not around anymore," Lila said.

"Oh no," Five said. "What happened?"

"Who's Herb?" Dave asked Klaus quietly, but Klaus shrugged.

"He retired," Lila explained. "He shepherded the Commission through the rebuilding and restructuring. He was elected to A.J.'s old post at the head of the board. Held it for fifteen years. And then he retired to Hawaii."

"Wait, fifteen years?" Diego said. "You said only one year has passed for you."

"Yeah, the Commission exists out of time, remember," Lila said. "I skipped through the dull bits."

"If you really think this Herb guy can help us, we could go to Hawaii," Allison suggested. "There's several flights a day, it's not that hard."

"Oof, no," Lila said. "Hawaii circa 500 A.D.-ish. Give or take a hundred years. And he didn't specify which island."

"Okay, that's a non-starter," Five said. "Lila, we're going to have to infiltrate the Commission. _Together_ , this time. And find somebody who can answer our questions."

Allison raised her hand. "Not just the two of you. We're all coming along."

Five winced. "The more of us there are, the less sneaky we are. And Lila and I are the only ones who know the Commission."

" _Still_ not true," Diego said.

"We don't have to be sneaky if you're with us," Allison pointed out. "If we get in trouble, you roll back time and we'll try again."

"Er," Five said. "My powers aren't unlimited, remember. If I use it too much in a short period, I run out of juice."

"Well then, it's handy that we'll also have access to mind control," Allison said. "And I never run out of juice."

"What happened to not wanting to use your power because it's a violation of personal autonomy?" Five asked.

Allison shrugged. "Sounds like the Commission isn't fussy about violations. They deserve what's coming to them."

"Hey, hey," Lila said cautiously. "We're not _attacking_ the Commission. We're just trying to learn why they keep trying to kill your friend Dave."

"Yeah, so," Klaus said, looking around, "I'm in."

"Is that a good idea?" Luther said. "Klaus's powers aren't exactly the most useful in a fight."

"He fought off three Commission assassins tonight," Lila reminded him.

"And then collapsed," Luther pointed out.

"We can hold him in reserve," Allison said. "Vanya, are you in?"

"Sure," Vanya said, and Dave didn't understand why she was beaming a smile until she added, "Do you realize, you guys, this is the first time in our lives that you've actually invited me along on a mission?"

Five patted her shoulder. "You, little sis, are the big gun."

"What about Dave?" Luther asked. "Are we bringing him? Because if not, somebody should stay here to protect him. He doesn't even have powers."

"He was in the army for ten years, in an active war zone for most of that time," Allison noted. "I think he can handle this."

"He definitely can," Klaus concurred.

"Can _you_?" Dave asked him quietly. He didn't love bringing this up in front of all the siblings and Lila, but considering the Hargreeves' collective impulsiveness and the way the briefcases worked, he was afraid that they were going to find themselves in active combat any second now. "You did great tonight, with the assassins and the ghosts. But if we're about to go into some kind of close quarters urban combat situation, it could get hairy. And you've got that thing with the loud noises..." If Klaus took Vanya's drugs, he'd be protected from the flashbacks but useless in a fight. So he'd have to go in nerves raw and reactive.

But, "Sure," Klaus said flippantly. "PTSD is for _after_ the fight is over."

"He's fine," Lila said. "If we're doing this, let's get a move on. The longer we sit around yapping, the more chance they see us coming."

"But," Vanya protested, "if the Commission exists _outside_ of time..."

"Don't think about it too hard," Five advised. "Hold hands, everybody. Let's go."


	14. Chapter 14

They popped into existence in a cool, musty-smelling place that was completely dark. Dave felt nauseated, but not as badly as the last time he'd time-traveled; maybe it was the kind of thing your body got used to.

"Did something go wrong?" Luther's voice asked.

"Oh, shit," Klaus said quietly, beside Dave. "This is _not_ what I signed up for."

"Don't panic, everybody," Lila said confidently, somewhere a little off to the side. "We're in a storage room. The lights are off. Give me a moment to find the switch..."

Klaus let out a soft wail.

"Honey, it's okay," Dave told him, squeezing his hand. He let go of the other hand he'd been holding—Vanya's—and wrapped his arms around Klaus in a hug. "We're all here, and I've got you," he murmured into Klaus's ear.

There was the sound of furniture scraping. Lila swore softly. And then the lights came on.

They were in a large, high-ceilinged room cluttered with stacks of tables and chairs.

Everyone looked at Dave and Klaus.

"I'm okay," Klaus said, stepping back from Dave and straightening his shirt. It was a clingy, long-sleeved T in a shimmery silver material—it had been the closest item to hand when Dave had been dressing Klaus in a hurry after the Commission attack.

"Off to a great start," Luther muttered.

"Klaus doesn't like the dark," Allison said—explaining for Lila, Dave realized.

"That's fine," Lila said cheerfully. "There won't be any more dark." She stowed the briefcase inside the large bottom drawer of a nearby desk.

"Now, whatever happens, it's important that we all stay together," Five said, glaring at them all. "If we _do_ get separated, rendezvous back here."

"And if you get stranded, head for the Briefcase Room," Lila added. "Any Commission employee can tell you where to find it."

Dave thought privately that it might've been a better idea to have their mission briefing _before_ they jumped into enemy territory, but never mind. They were here now, and this was happening.

"Our goal is to find out what Protocol One is," Lila said. "First stop is the Infinite Switchboard. The operators there must at least know what they're looking for."

"Ha," Diego said. "I _told_ you it was all about the Infinite Switchboard."

Lila opened the room's door just a crack, peeked out, and then opened it wide and beckoned everyone to follow her.

The corridor outside was tiled in dingy linoleum and lit by slightly-flickering florescent strip lights. It had a basement feel to it; there were exposed pipes running along the ceiling.

Lila led them some distance down the corridor, and they all trailed after her silently. The place seemed deserted. Then Lila abruptly ducked through an open doorway into an unlit room. The rest of their party petered to a stop; Luther and Diego, who had been closest to Lila, were clearly uncertain as to whether they were supposed to follow her in.

Dave thought back to moments in Vietnam when the squad had moved through the jungle like a single, multi-bodied creature—so perfectly in sync from long familiarity with each other that they barely needed hand signals, let alone speech.

This was not like that.

Lila reappeared, holding a clipboard. She waved it at them. "Thought a prop might come in handy. We're almost at the stairs." Without further explanation, she quickly led them into and up a tight stairwell, climbing six flights at a brisk pace. By the end of it, Vanya was panting, though the rest of the siblings took it comfortably enough. Dave was glad he'd been keeping up his morning calisthenics.

This time they emerged into a wider, better-lit corridor with attractive paneled molding on the walls. And they weren't alone; a pair of women in drab business attire were approaching quite close to the stairwell exit, chatting softly, and other folks were visible farther away up and down the hall.

"So," Lila said loudly, turning to walk backwards facing the group and holding her clipboard prominently, "this here is the fifth floor, where you'll find the Analysts' Break Room, Processing Centers B3 through D7, and of course the gender-free toilets."

The nearby women's eyes slid right over their group, barely curious. Dave was impressed.

Lila kept walking backwards and talking. The Hargreeves collectively made a visible and fairly successful effort to look like a bunch of bright-eyed recruits.

"Is there free coffee in the break room?" Luther asked earnestly.

"The coffee is free but fees apply for the donuts," Lila returned, managing to sound like a bored recording of herself. She started to turn them down a side corridor.

Five, who had been just ahead of Dave and slightly to his left, was suddenly further ahead and off to the right. "Stop," he said urgently to Lila. His hair was ruffled and his collar was askew. That hadn't been true a second ago, had it? "We do _not_ want to go that way. Trust me."

Without missing a beat, Lila veered back into the main corridor and kept walk-and-talking them along it.

"Infinite Switchboard's that way," Diego murmured, nodding his head back at the side corridor that they hadn't taken.

"We'll find another route," Lila promised between smile-gritted teeth, tapping her clipboard.

"Should I be smoothing the way for us?" Allison asked, eyeing the passing Commission personnel.

"Hold onto that thought," Lila said, and opened a door marked Processing Center C8. "Hey, Sami!" she said. "Can I grab you for a moment?"

A surprised-looking middle-Eastern man in a white shirt and red tie emerged from the room. "Lila?" he said. "You're not supposed to be here anymore."

"I heard a rumor," Lila said to him, looking mischievous, "that you brought my tour group to the Infinite Switchboard."

"Huh?" Sami said. "What tour group? Why would I do that?"

"Ugh." Lila rolled her eyes at Allison. "You have to do it first. Right now all I can do is throw knives very accurately."

" _I_ heard a rumor," Allison said a little tartly, stepping in. "Yeah, anyway. What she said."

Sami blinked; his eyes looked funny for a moment, and then seemed normal again. "You'll need hall passes," he said. "Just let me fetch them."

"Seriously," Vanya said as they waited for him to come back, "I _don't_ know why I'm the one Dad decided to bench. Allison, you could do anything. To anyone."

"Oh, I know," Allison said, not smiling.

Sami popped back out of the room, bearing a handful of printed cardboard hall passes. He handed them around conscientiously, and then cheerfully indicated that everyone should follow him.

This time, Five didn't stop them when they entered the side corridor. They encountered a cluster of fit-looking folks in snazzy suits, and Five visibly tensed, but they all waved their hall passes and passed the other group without incident.

"Here we go," Sami announced, opening a door marked 'Infinite Switchboard 2589—Authorized Personnel Only'. "Mei, the tour group's here to see you."

"What are you talking about?" snapped a middle-aged Asian woman perched on a stool in front of a fairly finite-looking switchboard. "Nobody's allowed in—"

"I heard a rumor," Lila said quickly, "that you let us in and told us anything we needed to know."

"Oh, the tour group, of course!" Mei said, smiling warmly. "Do come in, I've been expecting you!"

Sami gave them a cheerful wave and headed back the way he'd come. Lila, Dave and all of the Hargreeves piled into the rather small switchboard room, and Vanya pulled the door shut behind them.

"Well now," Mei said. "What would you like to know?"

"Why do your fucking agents keep trying to kill my boyfriend?" Klaus asked immediately.

Mei looked confused. "One couldn't really say that they're _my_ agents. I just work the switchboard."

Five put a quelling hand on Klaus's arm, shot him a 'shut up, you idiot' kind of look, and said to Mei, "What's Protocol One?"

"Oh, interested in ancient history, are you?" Mei smiled conspiratorially. "Page one of the manual, but up until recently we operators assumed it was vestigial. Like leg bones in whales, or wings on an ostrich."

Five shot her a tight grin that _almost_ managed to look patient. "And what _is_ it?"

"Suppression of the development of the microchip," Mei said.

Five cocked his head. "And what's a microchip?"

" _Exactly_ ," Mei nodded. "Nobody's seen one in the living memory of the Commission. But the manual has a list of precursors to look out for, and every Infinite Switchboard operator memorizes what they look like. It's even part of the annual refresher training. Usually we do it right before lunch. I always thought it was pointless, but then—you'll hardly believe it—a few months ago, a precursor popped up in 1975!"

Dave felt the weight of at least half of the eyes in the room converging on him.

"May we _see_ the manual?" Five asked.

Mei obligingly pulled a thick three-ring binder out from under her work counter, and handed it to Five. Five flipped open to the first page. Dave leaned over his shoulder to look at the color photos.

"Oh," said Klaus, also looking. "Isn't that sort of like that electronics stuff you play around with, sweetie?"

Klaus was right. One of the pictures looked very much like one of Dave's circuit boards. Another one looked intriguingly similar to an idea that he'd had, but hadn't implemented yet.

"So _this_ is why the Commission wants Dave dead?" Diego said. "I don't get it."

"Protocol One, urgent, highest priority," Five read out loud from the manual. "Eliminate all microchip research at precursor stage to prevent eventual development of autonomous artificial intelligence."

"What's autonomous artificial intelligence?" Klaus asked.

"Like Mom?" Vanya suggested.

"Their mom was a robot," Dave explained to Lila's confused look. "Apparently."

Lila laughed. "What? That's ridiculous."

"Says a woman who used to work for a talking goldfish," Five pointed out.

"Hey, A.J. was all right," Lila said. "But robots don't exist."

"Uh, guys?" Klaus said, raising his hand. "I didn't mention this earlier because it didn't seem relevant, but the ghost of a goldfish has been trailing us since the basement. And it does sort of seem like it wants to talk to me."

"A.J.!" Lila exclaimed. "Klaus, he was head of the Commission for _ages_! He probably knows all about this Protocol One thing. Ask him about it!"

"Why don't you ask him?" Klaus asked. "If you're such good friends. Go ahead and copy my power."

Lila gave the sort of smile that you might expect from somebody who'd just been invited to step into a pit of poisonous snakes. "No, that's all right," she said. "I won't steal your thunder."

Klaus grimaced. "Number Four, the Séance, reporting for duty. Okay, fuck, what do we want to ask the dead fish?"

"Anything he can tell us about Protocol One," Five said instantly. "What's a microchip? Why is it important? How can Dave avoid getting targeted again?"

"Well, you heard him," Klaus said into the empty air. And then, a moment later, cupping his hand to his ear, "You'll have to speak up. You're _really_ quiet." And then he tensed, the way someone would when they're listening carefully to something hard to hear.

Dave took a moment to reflect on where his life had taken him: to a building outside of time, watching his lover interrogate the invisible ghost of a talking goldfish about why time-traveling assassins kept trying to kill him.

And Klaus was beautiful, and Dave wouldn't want to be anywhere but here.

"Okay, okay," Klaus said eventually. "To paraphrase—"

"Don't paraphrase," Five interrupted. "Tell us exactly what he said."

"Well, that would be great if I had an eidetic memory," Klaus said, rolling his eyes. "Let's just add that to the long list of other superpowers that I'd rather have. So, _paraphrasing_ , microchips are things that make computers smaller and better. There was once a reality where by 2019, every man, woman, non-binary person and child carried computers around in their pockets. They called them 'phones', but they could plot a route between any two points on Earth, display the text of any book ever written, translate languages, broadcast pictures like TV, and solve systems of equations with hundreds of variables. People mostly used them to slide little pictures of matching candy together."

"Huh?" Five said.

"It made a very satisfying noise, apparently."

"That's impossible," Dave said with conviction. "A computer that could do all that doesn't exist. If it did, it would have to be bigger than the Empire State Building. With that many physical connections, it would never actually _work_. Things would break faster than you could fix them."

"Not if you used a semiconductor and constructed the resisters, capacitors and transistors all out of the same integrated material," Klaus said.

"Oooooohhh," Dave said. Light-bulb moment. "Yeah, I was trying to do that."

"I'm glad that made sense to you," Klaus said. "I was just repeating the fish's gobbledygook."

"Wait, but all that sounds _great_ ," Luther said. "Why is the Commission trying to prevent it?"

Klaus cupped his hand back to his ear and listened intently again.

"Ah, okay," he said. "In the original timeline—and here we're talking about the Mark 1, fresh-out-of-the-box, not meddled-with-by-time-travelers timeline—the computers eventually became intelligent and self-aware, and decided to kill all humans. And pretty much succeeded. A few desperate human survivors managed to invent time travel and establish the Commission in a last-ditch attempt to save the human race. The Commission's original purpose was entirely to cleanse the timeline of anyone who might invent the microchip."

"So _Dave_ was going to trigger an apocalypse?" Allison said. "Oh my God, he really is just like a member of the family."

"Wait, though," Five said. "The Commission was founded to _prevent_ an apocalypse? Back when I worked for them, company policy took the 2019 apocalypse that Vanya caused as a given. We weren't supposed to try to fix it."

Klaus listened to the air for a moment, and then shrugged. "Mission drift. The Commission's been around for a _long_ long time."

"So, I think we're done here," Luther said. "We've got our answers: all Dave has to do is find a new hobby, and he'll be safe. Right?"

"I can do that," Dave promised. He felt a complicated pang of regret—apparently he'd really been onto something with the semiconductors! But he sure didn't want to be the target of time-traveling assassins for the rest of his life.

"Okay, sure," Lila said. "But what was that about your mother being a robot?"

Klaus lurched suddenly to the side, a look of distress on his face. As everyone turned to look at him, he collected himself, stood up straight with a little shudder, and said, "Ahem. I believe I heard something in the hall. Excuse me for one moment while I investigate."

Klaus walked stiff-legged to the door, while the siblings exchanged slightly puzzled glances.

"Did Klaus sound a little ... _weird_ ... just now?" Vanya asked as Klaus left the room.

Five frowned. "Yeah, all of a sudden he sounded more like A.J."

Lila nodded agreement.

"Oh _shit_ ," Diego said, and scrambled for the door. He'd been standing at the back corner of the little room, so he had to shove past several siblings. "A.J.'s possessing Klaus!"

"What?!" Dave said.

"That's a thing that can happen?" Luther said.

"I've seen Ben do it," Diego said, hand on the doorknob. "That's not Klaus at all right now, it's A.J. in the driver's seat. _Fuck_ , and he's locked us in."

"See you soon," Five said, and teleported away.

"Let me through," Luther said. Shouldering past Diego, he gave the door a shove. It ripped off its hinges, falling outward into the hallway. Luther immediately exited via the open doorway. Everyone else followed in a hurry; Dave managed to stay near the front of the group.

"Enjoy the rest of your tour!" Mei called after them cheerfully as they left.

Klaus/A.J. was well down the hallway, yelling "Intruders! Intruders! Summon all available field agents!" There was no sign of Five.

Diego lifted his knife hand, but before he could throw, Dave was tackling him. "That's _Klaus_!"

"I was only gonna hit him in the leg," Diego said.

"And there he goes around the corner," Lila observed. "Dammit." She took off at a run; so did everybody else.

So far they weren't facing any resistance. The field agents A.J. had been calling for were not yet in evidence. Everybody who _had_ been in the corridor had made hasty exits into adjoining rooms, slamming the doors shut behind themselves.

They reached the corner. Luther, in the lead, went around it without even peeking first. He didn't draw any fire, so Dave figured it was safe enough to follow.

Klaus/A.J. was some distance away, still yelling for help but jogging awkwardly. It was looking good for the rest of them catching up; Dave reflected that, being a fish, it was unsurprising that A.J. wasn't all that good at running.

And then the first field agent popped into the corridor.

She was dressed in a bright red cocktail dress, holding a thick briefcase in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. She looked up the corridor, looked down, and then opened fire.

"Down!!!" Dave yelled, diving for non-existent cover. The corridor was a death trap. There was nowhere to hide.

"I got this," Diego said calmly. His hand was already extended, and ... no bullets were hitting the walls. Or the Hargreeves.

Diego flicked his hand to the side, and a swarm of bullets fell gently to the linoleum with a tik-tik-tik-tik-tik.

"My turn," Vanya said, eyes white. The red dress woman hit the ceiling, and fell like a rag doll.

"You could've left something for me to do," Luther complained.

"Oh, it's not over yet," Lila assured him. "Let's go."

Dave took the red dress woman's gun as they passed her. He wasn't familiar with the model, but with luck there were still some rounds in the magazine.

Three more Commission fighters popped into the corridor in front of them. These ones were wearing animal masks, like the ones who'd attacked Dave and Klaus in their apartment. A raccoon, a beaver and a fox, Dave identified them pointlessly.

Lila, white-eyed, waved a hand, and the three masked assassins smacked into the corridor's wall and fell down like overcooked noodles.

"Oh, this is fun," Lila said. "I love hanging out with you folks!"

"A.J.'s getting away," Allison pointed out.

They kept running. The periodic incursions by lethally-armed field agents seemed to be no more than a minor annoyance, slowing them down enough that they couldn't gain ground on Klaus/A.J.. At no point did Dave fire the gun that he'd taken. Lila and the Hargreeves didn't need his help.

Klaus/A.J. disappeared through a door. If Dave was remembering correctly, it was the stairwell that they'd all come up.

"Is there some way we can cut him off?" he asked as they all sprinted towards the stairwell.

"No, the elevators in this place run like molasses," Lila said. "We've just got to catch him. Sure would be nice if we had somebody with us who could teleport."

"Yeah, where _did_ Five go?" Allison asked.

"Worry about that later," Luther said, tearing the stairwell door off its hinges and flinging it to the side. "Anyway, I've got him now."

Klaus/A.J. was two flights down. Dave was about to question Luther's assertion, when suddenly Luther just _launched_ himself over the railing and down through the empty center of the stairwell. He collided with Klaus/A.J. and they both went tumbling. Dave's bile rose in his throat at the sight, but a moment later he realized that Luther had actually wrapped his arms around Klaus's body and was protecting it as they rolled. They came to a stop on the next landing.

Dave knew he wouldn't survive copying Luther's feat, but he ran down the stairs so fast that he might have been flying anyway.

"Unhand me, you big buffoon!" Klaus/A.J. was yelling, struggling in Luther's grip.

"Now what?" Luther asked, looking up past Dave at his arriving siblings.

"Klaus, are you in there?" Dave asked desperately. "Can you hear me?"

Allison knelt beside Luther and looked into Klaus/A.J.'s eyes. "I heard a rumor," she said, "that you left Klaus alone."

"Ha!" said the wrongly-inflected voice from Klaus's lips. "Nice try. But these aren't my eyes. These aren't my ears. Your parlor trick won't work on me. Now let me go, or I'll kill your brother."

"I think he's bluffing," Vanya said. "He needs Klaus's body to ride, doesn't he?"

"If I kill this body, I'm no worse off than I was before," A.J. declared. "Your brother, on the other hand, would be quite unrecoverable." And then he shook his head violently.

"What's happening!?" Dave asked, trying not to squeak.

"Not to worry," A.J. said, looking at them calmly again with Klaus's eyes. "You have until the count of ten to let me go. Ten, nine, eight..." He shook his head violently again.

"LILACOPYKLAUS'SPOWER!" Dave yelled in a sudden panicked flash of inspiration.

"What?" she said. "But I _hate_ that—oh, okay." She hunched her shoulders and blinked hard. "Oh!" she said then. "Klaus is fighting A.J. I can see them both!"

"Can you _help_ him?" Dave asked.

"I'm not sure how to—" Lila sounded a little flustered. Frowning, she reached her hands out. Meanwhile, Klaus's whole body began convulsing, within the constraint of Luther's firm grip. "Oh," said Lila, "maybe if I—" Her hands started glowing blue. "Luther, give him to me," she said.

"Uh, okay," Luther said, climbing to his feet with Klaus's shaking body still gripped firmly in his arms. At Lila's gesture, he shifted his grip so that he was holding Klaus out at arm's length, by the shoulders.

Lila got right up behind Klaus and put her arms around his midsection. "Here we go," she said, clenching one glowing blue hand into a fist and clasping her other hand around it. She braced her linked hands at Klaus's diaphragm and suddenly thrust them inwards towards herself.

Klaus's eyes bugged open and he doubled over, vomiting.

There was a chorus of 'ew' and 'yuck' and "Couldn't you have _warned_ us, Lila?"

"It worked," she said. "I got the little fucker out of him. Can't you see him flopping around there? No? Just me then, okay."

Klaus moaned. "Did somebody get the license number of that fish?"

"Honey, are you okay?!" Dave asked him frantically.

"Is A.J. still here?" Vanya asked. "Could he jump back into somebody?"

"He's still here all right," Lila said, eyeing the puddle of sick. "I'm open for suggestions."

"You've got to dismiss him," Luther said. "Send him away, to the other side or whatever. We've seen Klaus do it before."

"Yeah, so have I, but I don't know how to do it," Lila said. "It's a profoundly unintuitive use of the power."

"Okay, so Klaus has got to do it," Luther said. "Klaus?"

Klaus's eyes were open, but they were glassy. He was trembling, and it was obvious that he was only still on his feet because Lila was holding him up.

"Oh shit," Lila said. "A.J.'s starting to flop closer to me and Klaus again."

"Out of the stairwell," Luther ordered them all. "Lila, do you need me to take Klaus?"

"Nah, I've got this," she said. She shifted her stance slightly, and then picked Klaus up and slung him over her shoulder like he weighed nothing.

"Lila, did you just copy Luther's power?" Dave asked as he followed her down the half-flight of steps, keeping a careful eye on Klaus.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't exactly subtle about it, was I?"

"Okay, but if you're copying Luther's power, then you're not copying Klaus's, right?"

"Right." She exited the stairwell by the door that Luther had already opened. They were in a corridor very similar to the one they'd left, but it was currently deserted.

"So nobody has eyes on A.J." Dave concluded.

"Oops," Lila said. "Here, you'd better take your boyfriend off my hands." She slung Klaus unceremoniously at Dave, and then did her little blink and hunch routine again. "Oh, good call Dave," she said. "Walls do _not_ stop ghosts. He's right there." She pointed at a patch of floor.

Dave, meanwhile, had his arms full of Klaus.

Klaus moaned, but also nuzzled Dave's neck, which was a reassuring sign.

"We've got to deal with this," Luther said. " _Klaus_ has to deal with this. Dave, can you get him to pay attention to me?"

"He's pretty wrecked," Dave said. "But I'll try."

"Lemme sit down," Klaus said in a kind of breathy groan.

"This isn't really a safe place to stop," Lila pointed out.

"I don't think moving again is going to help Klaus," Luther said, peering at his brother with an assessing frown. "We can hold this corridor. Diego, go and guard that end," he pointed; "Vanya, you've got the other end."

"No problem," she said, sounding pleased at her role.

Dave lowered Klaus so that he was sitting propped up against the corridor's wall. "Honey, can you do the thing?" he asked. "Send the ghost fish away?"

"Oh fuck Dave, I feel like I'm gonna pass out," Klaus murmured weakly. He was still trembling.

"Allison, can you rumor Klaus somehow in a way that would help?" Luther asked.

"You mean, like, rumor his strength back?" Allison frowned. "That's ... actually an intriguing idea. I have no idea if it would work. I'm a little reluctant to experiment with it _right now_ , in case it goes horribly wrong."

"Guys? Guys? A.J.'s getting closer," Lila said, lifting her feet carefully and stepping backwards.

"Okay, Klaus?" Luther crouched down next to his brother, on the opposite side from Dave. "You've got to do this. And I know you can. You're stronger than any of us ever gave you credit for. You have fought through _so_ much, and survived."

Klaus lolled his head back against the wall and smiled faintly at his brother. "Luuuuther," he said, "you're giving me butterflies. I never thought I'd hear you say such _nice_ things about me. Too bad I'm about to get my life force snuffed out by an angry dead fish." His eyelids fluttered shut, and his head sagged again.

"Lila?" Dave yelped. "Where's A.J.?"

"Here," she said, tapping gingerly with her boot-clad toe at a spot just three feet from Klaus. She jumped backwards immediately after she'd done so, watching the floor warily.

"Klaus, wake up," Luther said, lightly smacking Klaus's cheek. Klaus opened his eyes again but didn't focus them.

"Allison, I think you should try the rumor thing," Luther said, looking back up at his sister. "Nothing else is working."

"Wait," Dave said. He took a quick look at the submachine gun he'd been carrying, and switched the fire selector to 'safe'. Then he shoved the gun against Klaus's chest, and barked "Soldier!"

Klaus's hands lifted to grip the gun, and he focused on Dave with a slight confused frown.

"Chin up, back straight!" Dave continued. "Charlie's coming over the hill. What are you going to do?"

"Who's Charlie?" Lila asked in the background.

But the important thing was Klaus. Lifting his chin and straightening his back. And looking at Dave with clear eyes and saying, "I'm holding the hill."

And then Klaus just stared at the floor, and Lila stared at the same place on the floor, and everybody was very quiet for a long, long moment.

Until Lila whooped in delight, "He did it!"

And Klaus went limp. The gun slipped from his grip and fell to the floor. Dave caught him as he toppled sideways, and cradled him against his chest.

"What's happening?" Luther asked anxiously. "Did A.J. hurt Klaus?"

"I think it's just that dismissing an unwilling ghost takes a lot of energy," Dave said, checking the pulse at Klaus's neck. "And he already did it once tonight—he fainted afterwards that time, too."

"That was great how you got him to pull it together," Luther said, giving Dave's shoulder a friendly squeeze. "You know, I never really thought about how Klaus actually _was_ a soldier."

"It was risky," Allison said, crouching down next to them and giving Dave a careful look. "What if you'd triggered his PTSD and just sent him into a flashback?"

Dave shrugged. He'd been conscious of that risk, but at the time it had felt like the right thing to do. He'd been sure that Klaus had the strength to pull himself together and fight A.J. one more time; but Klaus had needed convincing. "I figured that if my idea fucked him up, you could still try your thing," he said. "If _your_ thing fucked him up, there might not be any coming back from it."

"Good point," Allison admitted.

"Hey guys, heads up!" Diego called from down the hall.

And then with a pop, Five was at their side.

"Shit, am I too late?" he asked, staring at Klaus.

"He's okay," Luther said.

"-ish," Allison qualified. "He's okay-ish. A.J. is gone."

"For now, at least," Dave said. "Ah, apparently when Klaus sends ghosts away, they only go permanently to the other side if they really want to. Otherwise they come back eventually."

"How long is it until 'eventually'?" Luther asked.

Dave shrugged. "No idea."

"So Klaus managed to fight A.J. off?" Five asked.

"With some help from Lila," Allison said.

"And _no_ help from you," Luther said. "Where the hell were you, Five?"

"I went to get backup," he said. He waved down the hall, and Dave turned to see that Diego was approaching, accompanied by a tall, light-skinned Black woman in a gray blazer and pencil skirt. "This is Dot. She's the current chair of the Governing Board. I figured maybe she could talk some sense into A.J."

"That's convoluted," Lila observed. "We just caught Klaus and squeezed A.J. out of him. Really could've used your help with the catching part."

"Well, let's just say that I had a vision of how that would've played out, and it didn't go well," Five said. "I'll clarify later. Anyway, Dot is a very reasonable lady, and in exchange for some intel I've gathered about the Sparrow Academy, she agreed to help us with A.J., let us all leave here peacefully, and instruct the analysts to stop sending agents after Dave as long as Dave promises to stay away from circuit boards for the rest of his life."

Dot smiled politely at all of them, and nodded. "Yes, that's accurate," she said. "Hello, Lila."

"Hi Dot," Lila said, with a patently awkward smile. Luther and Allison, meanwhile, stood up, looking cautiously alert. Dave stayed on the floor with Klaus.

"While I've got you here, Lila," Dot said, "could we just talk a little about how you keep attacking Commission personnel and interfering with their operations all over the timeline?"

Lila lifted her chin. "Okay, sure. Or maybe we could talk about how the Commission keeps brutally murdering innocent people?"

"We have operating protocols," Dot said. "The preservation of the timeline is paramount."

"I _know_ that," Lila said. "Have I taken any action to endanger the timeline? No! I make sure that the targets get firmly removed from whatever context they were causing problems in."

"You removed Mr. Katz from 1975, and he went right back to his old tricks in 2019," Dot pointed out.

Dave lifted a hand and politely waited for Dot to grant him permission to speak. At her nod, he said, looking up at her, "I didn't know that what I was doing was causing problems for the timeline. Ma'am. Now that I know, I won't do it anymore."

"Be sure that you don't," Dot said sternly. And then in an aside to Lila and Five, she mentioned, "Frankly, my bigger concern right now is how he popped up in the first place. The Commission hasn't seen a Protocol One event in _generations_. Everybody with access to relevant materials and the tendency to experiment was carefully removed from the timeline ages ago." She looked at Dave. "How did you first become interested in logical circuits, Mr. Katz?"

"Well, ever since I was sixteen, I guess, when I started working in my uncle's shop," Dave said. "People would bring small electrical appliances in to get fixed, and my uncle showed me how to do it. The radios were especially interesting. And once you start taking those things apart and playing with them, there's always more questions than answers."

Dot frowned, and addressed Lila and Five again. "You see? It doesn't make any sense. He should've been caught in the original purge."

"Oooooh," Five said. "I think I know what happened. This is technically my fault."

"Go on," Dot prompted him, raising an eyebrow.

"Dave joined the army when he was 18, and he died in the Vietnam War," Five said. "He didn't have time to invent anything."

Dave suppressed a shiver like somebody was walking over his grave. He knew that what Five was saying was true. He'd seen Klaus's grief.

"But then I pulled my family back to the 1960s to escape the 2019 apocalypse, and Klaus met up with Dave and set him on a path to survive the war. And here we are."

Dot crossed her arms. "And _this_ is exactly why we can't have unauthorized time travel." She looked pointedly at Lila.

"So authorize me," Lila said immediately. "Bring me back into the fold. Give me access to the analysts and the switchboard. If I'd _known_ what the problem with Dave was, I could've fixed it properly."

Dot looked thoughtful for a moment, and then nodded. "I think we could make that work. The Commission would certainly benefit from having access to your skills again."

"And let me bring Diego along," Lila continued—earning a startled look from Diego.

Dot frowned. "The last time the Commission recruited him, he didn't make it through ten minutes of Orientation."

"I was in the middle of saving the world," Diego said. "I'll watch the whole film this time, if it's really that important."

Lila's face lit up. "So you'll do it? Join the Commission for real this time?"

"If I get to be with you," Diego said.

"Brilliant!" Lila exclaimed, and then she grabbed Diego and kissed him.

Diego's hands rose to the small of Lila's back, and he pulled her snug against him. The kiss continued, with obvious enthusiasm from both parties.

"Ahem," Dot said. "All right. I'll give him a second chance. But I'm flagging his file for monthly performance reviews for the first year."

Lila broke off the kiss but kept an arm slung possessively around Diego's shoulders as she turned back towards Dot. "And I want Five," she said.

"Oh, I am _not_ kissing you," Five said.

"Don't be disgusting," Lila tossed back easily.

"And I'm not working for the Commission again," Five said. "How thoroughly do I have to dynamite that bridge?"

"Not even to reform it into a kinder, gentler custodian of the timeline?" Lila asked. "Five, you owe me this. You murdered my bloody parents."

"Good point," Five said, "so why would you want me anywhere near you?"

Lila smirked. "I love your superpowers."

"Ah, I'm not sure I could get the Governing Board to agree to reinstate Five," Dot said. "He did murder the entire previous board."

Five gave a tight little smile. "Maybe it would be better all around if my involvement was more ... unofficial."

"So you'll do it?" Lila said. "Help me and Diego out?"

"I mean, _somebody_ 's got to keep an eye on Diego," Five said.

"All right," Dot said. "Off the record. I won't do anything to interfere with that arrangement. But from now on, Five stays off Commission grounds."

"Agreed," Five said easily. He offered Dot a hand, and she shook it. Then he turned to his siblings. "So, that's all settled. Now let's go home before the fish comes back."


	15. Chapter 15

Lila brought them all back to Vanya's living room.

"When are we?" Vanya asked, looking around.

"Just a minute or two after we left," Lila said.

Dave noticed the half-full glass of water sitting on the coffee table. It was the one he'd brought Klaus while he was recovering from his first round of ghostly action. Dave touched it, and confirmed that it was still warm.

"Should I put Klaus on the couch?" Luther asked. Klaus hadn't woken up yet; Luther had been carrying him ever since they'd left the spot where Klaus had dismissed A.J..

"No," Vanya said, "put him on my bed. He'll be more comfortable."

So they all traipsed into Vanya's bedroom. Luther laid Klaus on the bed, and Dave immediately climbed on beside him, lying next to him but propped up on an elbow. Some of Klaus's hair had fallen over his eyes; Dave smoothed it away, anxiously. "I thought he'd wake up by now," he mentioned.

"I think all we can do is let him rest," Allison said. "I'm not exactly sure how his powers work, but he was already pretty well knocked out _before_ we went to the Commission."

"Hey, uh, thanks, everybody," Dave said, looking around. "I guess that was pretty dangerous. And you did it for me."

"Of course we did," Allison smiled. "You're part of the family now."

"And so are you, Lila," Diego said. "If you want to be."

"Oi, maybe we should just casually date for a little while first," Lila said. "Before you implicitly propose to me."

Diego's eyes widened. "I-uh-dih-didn't mean it like th- _that_."

"Relax, you big goof," she said, giving him a fond punch in the shoulder. "I'm just winding you up."

"Five," Luther said, "you promised to explain why you bailed on us when A.J. possessed Klaus."

"Oh, right," Five said. "Well, I _didn't_ , the first time. I caught A.J. right outside the door. And he said that if I didn't let him go, he'd kill Klaus. I thought he was bluffing. He wasn't."

Dave looked up in dismay. "A.J. _killed_ Klaus?" He checked Klaus's breathing again, and then hugged him. "Shit."

"Well, I walked time backwards and went to look for a different solution," Five said. "Obviously."

"Wow, Klaus's power really is the worst," Vanya said. "I mean, I assume A.J. could possess Klaus _because_ of his power?"

"Seems likely," Diego said. "Ben never possessed anybody else besides Klaus, as far as I know."

"Is this something he's in constant danger from?" Dave asked, looking at Klaus with new alarm. "Do you think being on Vanya's meds would protect him?"

"He's never mentioned any other ghost doing it," Diego said. "Ben and Klaus knew each other really well."

"A.J. would've known the basics of how Klaus's powers worked," Lila said. "I mean, Mum had pretty good intel on you all, and she and A.J. had the same sources. Plus, A.J. used to ride around in a human body with the head cut off and replaced by a goldfish bowl. So it's not surprising he had the idea of taking over Klaus. With luck, your average ordinary-person ghost would never even think of it."

Dave didn't feel completely reassured, but he decided to focus on the fact that obviously, ghostly possession had not been a big problem for Klaus up until now.

But speaking of problems involving the dead: "Hey, uh, there are still two bodies in my apartment," Dave mentioned. "The Commission agents that Klaus killed. Any ideas about how I can deal with them?"

"Oh, no worries," Lila said. "I'll handle that. Now that I'm back with the Commission officially, body disposal is dead simple. Diego, Five—want to come with?"

"Not so fast," Five said. "If we're really going to do this team-up thing, I have some conditions."

Lila looked wary. "Such as?"

"I'm working _with_ you, not _for_ you," Five said. "If I don't like how things are going, I walk."

"Not like I could stop you," Lila said.

"And we base camp out of 2019," Five went on. "I want to live in parallel with my family. This new Commission gig is strictly a day job."

"Aw, but I have a really nice flat in 1980s Soho," Lila said.

Five glared at her steadily.

"All right, all right," Lila conceded.

"Er, does that mean Lila's going to be moving in with Diego and me?" Luther asked, looking a little uncomfortable. "Because I'm really not sure that there's space for three in the boiler room..."

Lila's eyes widened and she looked at Diego. "That wretched hole I found you in when I dropped Dave off is where you _live_? Oh, no no no, Diego. That will not do. We'll find a better place."

"I get that room in exchange for cleaning the gym," Diego said. "I don't exactly have the funds for anywhere better."

"No worries," Lila said. "A judicious time travel investment strategy will take care of that problem. For instance, if I recall correctly, I had five hundred pounds sterling invested at a three percent annual compounding interest rate in 1984. By now that should be..." she waved a hand vaguely, "at least enough for first and last months' rent and a damage deposit."

"Looks like you get the boiler room to yourself, big guy," Five said cheerfully to Luther.

Luther looked a little unsure of his own reaction.

"Hey," Diego said, going over and clasping Luther's shoulder, "if you want in on this Commission thing, just say the word. The more the merrier, right?" he finished, looking a little anxiously to Lila for approval.

Lila shrugged. "The raw power of a lorry full of bricks careening downhill might come in handy on occasion, sure." She looked around at the siblings. "Anyone else want in?"

Allison shook her head. "I'm in the middle of filming. And actually, I love my career."

Vanya looked thoughtful, but then also shook her head. "I spent my whole childhood wishing that I could go on missions with you all," she said. "And then tonight I finally did. And, well—dream fulfilled. Done. It was exciting, but frankly, not quite as exciting as stepping onstage to perform with the symphony. I've built my own life as a musician, and that's what I want to keep doing."

"Fair enough," Lila said. "Dave?"

Dave figured she was probably only asking him out of politeness. It wasn't like he had superpowers. But he answered seriously anyway: "No thanks, I'm happy working retail. I saw enough action for a lifetime in Vietnam."

"Actually, I'm going to stick with my day job too," Luther said then, earning looks of surprise from several siblings. He shrugged, and spread his hands. "I like working as a personal trainer. Helping people without needing to _hurt_ people."

"Okay," Lila said.

"But if you ever _need_ my help, just say the word and I'm there," Luther added quickly, looking at Diego.

"Oh, the same goes for me," Allison said. "Obviously."

"And me," Vanya added.

"And me," Dave agreed. "For what it's worth."

"David J. Katz," Lila said with a smile, "I think your help is worth plenty."

* * *

With Lila, Five and Diego gone, and Klaus still unconscious, Vanya, Allison, Luther and Dave agreed to take turns getting some rest and keeping watch. They'd all woken up around three in the morning, and although they'd passed several intense hours since then, it was still only four a.m. by the clock.

It wasn't exactly clear what they were watching _for_ , but Dave didn't want to leave Klaus unattended and nobody suggested that his concern was misplaced. They had no idea what kind of damage the night's events might have done to Klaus's body. At a minimum, Dave wanted someone constantly making sure that Klaus didn't stop breathing before he woke up.

There was also the question of ghosts. Could A.J. follow them here? Dave's guess was no, based on the remembered fact that Ben's ghost had never found Klaus in Vietnam. But he couldn't be sure. And Dave remembered, too, how the ghosts had overwhelmed Klaus after Eudora's séance with the young murder victim. Klaus had explained that in terms of the other ghosts finding out what he'd done for Éloïse, and wanting the same for themselves. What if word of A.J.'s possession trick had reached the ghost underground?

Dave really wasn't sure what they could do if Klaus was attacked by ghosts. The only other person who could interact with ghosts was Lila, when she was copying Klaus's power, and she had indicated that she was planning to go straight from body-removal to apartment-hunting.

As a precaution, Dave took one of Vanya's pills from the supply in Klaus's pocket, ground it up, and mixed it with water in a shot glass which he set by the bed. At least that way Klaus would have a fast way to block his powers if it seemed like he needed to.

Naturally, Dave volunteered for first watch.

The only places to sleep in Vanya's apartment were the bed and the couch. They decided that under the circumstances, two of them could join Klaus on the bed, one on each side of him. Vanya immediately volunteered to take the couch, since she was smallest and it wasn't long enough for anyone to lie on fully stretched out.

"Don't be silly," Allison said. "You deserve to sleep well in your own apartment. I'll take the couch."

Vanya looked from Allison to Luther and back again, and then nodded.

When Luther climbed carefully onto the bed, the mattress creaked, and Klaus rolled gently towards him down the suddenly-introduced slope. He came to a stop nestled against Luther's massive chest.

"Is this weird?" Luther asked, looking at Vanya and Dave both a little anxiously.

"It's fine," Vanya said, climbing onto the other side of the bed with a little hop. "We're all fully clothed." Lying down, she reached one arm over the top of Klaus's head to grasp Luther's hand. "I'm really glad we all made it back. I hope Klaus is okay."

"Me too," Luther said. "I'm sorry we were mean to you when we were kids, Vanya."

Vanya sighed, and rubbed her thumb along Luther's knobby knuckles. "It was complicated. In retrospect, it was ridiculous of me to be jealous of you all for being forced to go on missions where you got hurt and risked your lives. You were children."

"So were you," Luther returned softly.

"I'm really glad we're doing better now," she said.

Luther nodded. "Me too."

* * *

Klaus didn't wake up until nearly 4 p.m. the next day.

"Where am I?" he croaked.

Dave set the book he'd been reading on the chair he'd been sitting on, and rushed to Klaus's side. "We're back at Vanya's place," he said, cupping a hand to Klaus's cheek. "How do you feel?"

"Like the end of a month-long bender," Klaus said, blinking up at Dave. "Was there a talking fish?"

"Well, I never saw him, but by all reports yes," Dave said. "What do you remember?"

Klaus frowned. "Everything, I think. We were attacked? And we went to the Commission. All of us together. And—that fucking goldfish snuck in my ear and took over my body." He looked at Dave. "Are _you_ okay? Did we figure out how to stop the Commission from hunting you?"

"Yeah, the chair of the Governing Board herself promised to leave me alone as long as I stop experimenting with circuits," Dave said. "And Lila, Diego and Five are working for the Commission now. I think the plan is to redirect the Commission's energies away from assassinations and towards more peaceful ways of protecting the timeline."

"Huh," Klaus said. "That sounds a little off-brand for Five and Diego."

"It's Lila's plan," Dave explained.

"Oh, okay." Klaus took a shaky breath. "Could you help me sit up?"

Dave did; Klaus came upright with a groan, and leaned heavily against Dave.

"We were all pretty worried about you," Dave mentioned. "Ah, not to scare you or anything, but you should probably know: A.J. actually did kill you. Five walked back time so that we could have a re-do."

"So I owe him another one. Okay. Always nicer to get a timeline re-write instead of having to come back from the dead directly. Hurts less." He let out a quick whimper, pressing the heel of his hand to his temple. "Not a _lot_ less, to be clear."

"Klaus, are you in danger from any ghosts right now?" Dave asked.

Klaus looked around, and shook his head. "There's nobody in here with us."

"The possession thing that A.J. did. Could it happen again?"

"Maybe? Probably not. Ben tried a few times, but the only time it really took was when I let him. A.J. caught me off guard, and I was already nearly drained from the fight at our place and sending Lila's horrible mother away."

"Okay," Dave said, moderately relieved. "But let's be careful about that, okay honey? I really, really don't want to lose you."

"Promise," Klaus said, and he made a heart-crossing gesture.

"So can I get you anything?" Dave asked. "To make you more comfortable? I should let Vanya and the others know that you're awake, too."

"Cup of coffee," Klaus said, "a shower, and a leisurely fuck?"

Dave smiled. "Are you sure you're up for that?"

"I will be after coffee and a shower," Klaus promised. "And I did say 'leisurely'. You can do all the work."

"It would be my pleasure," Dave said, sincerely. He gave Klaus a quick hug, and a nuzzle promising more. Klaus moaned happily.

Dave went to get the requested coffee, and to share the news of Klaus's recovery with his siblings. His footsteps felt weightless.

Another scare was behind them, and their prospects looked good. Dave had never imagined that his life could be one with a happily-ever-after, but he seemed to be heading for one now.

The ghosts would always be a problem for Klaus, but he had ways of coping. And after last night, surprise attacks by time-traveling assassins shouldn't be an issue anymore.

Dave would have to find a new hobby. Maybe he could find something that he and Klaus could do together? They could try different activities, and see what they liked. Even the _process_ could be a fun adventure. And they wouldn't even have to hide the fact that they were trying things together, as a couple.

"I love you, sweetie!" Klaus called after him from the bedroom.

A delighted warmth bloomed in Dave's chest. This was his life now. "I love you too!" he called back, and headed for the coffee maker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of my story; I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Writing it was very fun for me; it's been 16 years since the last time I picked up a new fandom for writing (that was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in 2004). So the experience of thinking my way into The Umbrella Academy's universe and into the heads of all these new characters was really exhilarating.
> 
> It was also exhilarating seeing this story find so many new readers over the course of the week that I've been posting it! Thanks so much to everyone who reached out to comment or leave kudos along the way—every single one made me smile!
> 
> If you're interested in seeing random fannish musings from me, and maybe saying 'hi' and having a conversation about some interesting aspect of Umbrella Academy, I blog (sporadically) over at DreamWidth as [](https://shadowscast.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**shadowscast**](https://shadowscast.dreamwidth.org/). If you only want to see the entries relating to The Umbrella Academy, go in via the tag: [Umbrella Academy](https://shadowscast.dreamwidth.org/tag/umbrella+academy). (There's not much there yet, but I'll probably post more soon; watching S2 and writing this fic has left me with a lot of thoughts about the show!)
> 
> And that's all from me. Have a beautiful day, you lovely person!


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